Queen of the Desert

Queen of the Desert (2015)

6 mistakes

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Factual error: Gertrude Bell meets T E Lawrence and R Campbell Thompson while they are excavating at Petra. They were actually excavating at Carchemish, nearly 600 miles away and in a different country.

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Factual error: T E Lawrence is said to have a PhD. In fact, Lawrence did not have a PhD or any other higher degree.

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Factual error: Bell's father was said to have been heavily in debt while establishing his business. He didn't establish the business. His father did. He inherited it.

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Factual error: The British general at the party in Cairo wears a beard. Beards had been against regulations for the British Army for decades at that time. No British soldier would wear one.

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Factual error: The Victoria Cross is said to be "only for fallen heroes", which is how Gertrude immediately knows that Wylie is dead. But one does not have to be dead to be awarded the VC; many people have survived to be awarded it.

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Factual error: The timeline is completely wrong. The film begins in 1902, at which point Gertrude Bell has just left Oxford and is about to go to Persia. In fact, Bell was 34 in 1902 and went to Persia ten years earlier, in 1892. By 1902 she had already been travelling for a decade.

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Gertrude Bell: I operate for no-one.
Sir Mark Sykes: What is it then that attracts you to the Bedouin out there?
Gertrude Bell: Something that you and your world you can not ever understand. It's their freedom. It's their dignity. It's their poetry of life.

More quotes from Queen of the Desert

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