“Dreamers of the Day” by Mary Doria Russell

This is a beguiling book, full of humour. The narrator, an American woman, loses all her family in the influenza epidemic and inherits enough money to enable her to travel. She becomes part of the inner circle at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference where Winston Churchill, TE Lawrence, and Gertrude Bell, among others, meet to decide the fate of the Arab world after World War One. The consequences of these decisions are being seen today.

I enjoyed her cynical observations of war, the influenza epidemic, and the tourist attractions of Jerusalem. After excellent descriptions of Egypt’s ancient attractions she notes that Jerusalem appeared to her as an enormous mushroom colony, and that the soil around the Nile is so fertile you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.

Her Dachshund Rosie accompanies her on her travels and the dog’s personality radiates through the book. It’s not a breed that’s ever attracted me but I now feel more sympathetic towards them. When Rosie disgraced herself in a luxury car shared with Winston Churchill which was surrounded by rioters, Winston commented that this was “Quite a common reaction to combat”.

I appreciated the understanding of the difference between a suffragist and a suffragette.

When our heroine had too much to drink, Lawrence supported her when she vomited. “Oh, good Lord,” I gasped, hilarious and horrified as I took the handkerchief Lawrence offered. “I just puked in front of the Uncrowned King of Arabia.”

“My dear Miss Shanklin,” Lawrence said with a gallantry I have never forgotten, “I was an undergraduate at Oxford. Believe me: I’ve seen worse.”

While this is a work of fiction the author has used historical dialogue wherever this was available. The end of this book was strange, but I could excuse that as I’d enjoyed the rest.

We start to understand at least
some problems of the Middle East