Zahra Freeth ( Irene Zahra Dickson; 1924/1925 – 20 May 2015) was a British author who wrote primarily about the Middle East. She was the daughter of

H. R. P. Dickson Lieutenant Colonel Harold Richard Patrick Dickson (4 February 1881 – 14 June 1959) was a British colonial administrator in the Middle East from the 1920s until the 1940s, and author of several books on Kuwait. Life H. R. P. Dickson was one ...

(died 1959) and Dame Violet Dickson (died 4 January 1991).

Life

Zahra Dickson grew up in Kuwait. There, she and her family would spend time collecting animal and plant specimens for the Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens, discovering one plant and two insects that were previously unknown to science. One of the latter, a grasshopper, was named after Zahra: ''Utubius syriacus zahrae'', now known simply as ''Utubius syriacus.'' She later attended boarding schools in England, including Cheltenham Ladies College, and studied for her BA at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her first book, ''Kuwait Was My Home'', was published in 1956. She accompanied her husband, Richard Freeth, whom she married in 1951 to the bauxite mining town of Mackenzie,

British Guiana British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies, which resides on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana. The first European to encounter Guiana was S ...

(now Linden,

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

) and wrote ''Run Softly, Demerara'' (1960) about her experiences there. Her later writings were on Middle Eastern topics, including a children's book, ''Rashid of Saudi Arabia'' (2001). She lived in Essex. Her brother, Hanmer Yorke Warrington Saud ("Dickie") Dickson, MBE, who had served as H.M. Acting Commissioner in Anguilla, died in May 2005.

Death

Zahra Freeth died on 20 May 2015, aged 90, after a short illness. Her obituary in the Girton College alumni magazine described her as "a respected author who wrote about Kuwait and Arabia in the days before the oil boom".

Legacy

Freeth's writings are of use to modern-day anthropologists studying the change in Kuwaiti society. One such study commented that the "transformation of social values is clearly revealed in the history writings of Kuwait in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly in the work of Zahra Freeth, the daughter of a British diplomat who lived in Kuwait before and after the discovery of oil."Zaha F.M.M. Alsuwailan, "The Impact of Societal Values on Kuwaiti Women and the Role of Education", PhD thesis 2006, onlin

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Books by Zahra Freeth

*''Kuwait Was My Home''. London: Allen and Unwin (1956) *''Run Softly, Demerara''. London: Allen and Unwin (1960) *''A New Look at Kuwait''. London: Allen and Unwin (1972), *''Kuwait: Prospect and Reality''. London: Allen and Unwin (1972) with

H. V. F. Winstone Harry Victor Frederick Winstone FRGS (3 August 1926 – 10 February 2010), known as "Victor", was an English author and journalist, who specialised in Middle Eastern topics. He wrote biographies of several influential figures in the history of th ...

*''Explorers of Arabia: From Renaissance to the End of the Victorian Era''. London: Allen and Unwin (1978) edited by H. V. F. Winstone and Zahra Freeth *"A Journey to Hail". ''Saudi Aramco World'' 31 (3) (May/June 1980) with H. V. F. Winstone *''The Arab of the Desert'' by H. R. P Dickson (1983), 3rd edition revised and abridged; edited by Robert Wilson and Zahra Freeth *''Rashid of Saudi Arabia''. Lutterworth Press (2001) with Gordon Stowell, *Zahra Freeth also wrote the introduction to ''Traditional Architecture in Kuwait and the Northern Gulf'' by Ronald Lewcock. London: Art and Archaeology Research Papers and The United Bank of Kuwait (1978)

Life

Death

Legacy

Books by Zahra Freeth

References

Further reading