A FILM about the life of a remarkable woman from the region who helped establish the modern state of Iraq is being screened.

Letters From Baghdad tells the story of Gertrude Bell, a writer, administrator and archaeologist who was born at Washington Hall in County Durham in 1896 and lived for a time at the now demolished Rounton Grange in North Yorkshire, near Stokesley.

The award-winning film, which will be shown at The Forum in Northallerton on Friday, July 28, tells how she went on to become one of the most influential women in British diplomatic history.

Gertrude had become a well-respected expert on the Middle East partly through her work with the British Red Cross.

Her stepmother, Lady Florence Bell, had been president of the North Riding branch of the British Red Cross Society during the First World War. Gertrude worked for the organisation in London and France, indexing missing, wounded and dead soldiers so their relatives could be informed as soon as possible.

Her widespread travels and connections meant she was considered an expert on the Middle East, and in 1916 she was asked by the British government to mediate in mapping new territories following the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

This was an unprecedented role for a woman in the early 20th century, although history has given much of the credit to her male colleague TE Lawrence, of Lawrence of Arabia fame.

Letters From Baghdad, which is narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton, uses previously unseen footage to chronicle Gertrude’s extraordinary journey into the uncharted Arabian desert and the inner sanctum of British male colonial power.

It will be shown at The Forum on Friday, July 28 at 5.30pm.

To commemorate Gertrude’s Red Cross connections, there will be a special exhibition of First World War Auxiliary Red Cross hospitals on the night of the screening and tea, coffee and scones served beforehand.