Passport details
Lady Hester Stanhope, AKA The Queen of the Desert or Queen Hester. Born 12 March 1776, Queen Anne Street, Marylebone, London.
Claim to fame
The big puzzle about Hester Stanhope is how we’ve reached 2020 without a massive Netflix drama ever having been made about her fascinating life. Born into the British elite – the niece of prime minister William Pitt and the granddaughter of a man who made his fortune after discovering an enormous diamond in India, she was all set up for a life of comfort. Instead, shaken by a failed love affair, she left England when she was in her 30s, never to return. She travelled to Europe, then the Middle East, lost all her clothes in a shipwreck and started dressing as a man. She visited harems, smoked pipes, impressed the Bedouin with her horsemanship and, having discovered a mysterious map that suggested treasure was buried under the ruins of a mosque, undertook pioneering archaeological work in Palestine. She also travelled to Turkey, Malta, Egypt and Syria, finally settling in a turbulent corner of Lebanon.
Supporting documentation
Three volumes of travels and three of memoirs published after her death record her extraordinary journeys and unconventional views. Hester was headstrong and brilliant, and terrified people with her sharp tongue. Lord Byron met her in Greece and complained she had “a great disregard of received notion in her conversation as well as conduct”. Which is pretty rich, coming from Byron. Despite being a woman and a Christian, Hester defied tradition by riding into Damascus unveiled. “The crowds who watched must have been shocked into inaction” is the verdict of one biographer.
Distinguishing marks
Though too tall to be conventionally beautiful in her era – she measured nearly six feet – Hester was a striking and charismatic presence. In old age, she preserved her mystique by receiving visitors in a darkened room and making them drink a weird black concoction before they saw her. She also shaved her head for convenience, and wore a turban.
Last sighted
Hester spent the last seven years of her incredible life in her draughty fortress outside a Lebanese village, heavily in debt and going increasingly out of her mind. When asked if she wouldn’t prefer to return home and live out her days in relative comfort, she was contemptuous, insisting that she had no intention of going back to “knit or sew like an Englishwoman”. She died in her sleep in 1839, aged 63.
Intrepidness rating
An endlessly remarkable fusion of Lawrence of Arabia and Germaine Greer, Hester surely deserves 9.5.
