Freya Stark Dame Freya Madeline Stark ( Mrs Stewart Perowne ) , DBE ( born 31 January 1893 in Paris , France ; died 9 May 1993 in Asolo , Italy ) was a British explorer and travel writer . She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan , as well as several autobiographic works and essays . She was one of the first non - Arabians to travel through the southern Arabian deserts . Early life and studies . Freya Madeline Stark was born on 31 January 1893 in Paris , where her parents were studying art . Her mother , Flora , was an Italian of Polish / German descent ; her father , Robert , an English painter from Devon . Stark spent much of her childhood in northern Italy , helped by the fact that Pen Browning , a friend of her father , had bought three houses in Asolo . Her maternal grandmother lived in Genoa . For her ninth birthday she received a copy of " One Thousand and One Nights " , and became fascinated with the Orient . She was often ill while young and confined to the house , so she found an outlet in reading . She delighted in reading French , in particular Dumas , and taught herself Latin . When she was 13 she had an accident in a factory in Italy , when her hair got caught in a machine , and she had to spend four months getting skin grafts in hospital , which left her face slightly disfigured . During her childhood her parents separated . She later learned Arabic and Persian , and studied history in London . Travels and writings . During World War I , she trained as a VAD and served initially with G . M . Trevelyan ' s British Red Cross ambulance unit , based at the Villa Trento near Udine . Her mother had remained in Italy and taken a share in a business ; her sister Vera married the co - owner . In November 1927 she visited Asolo for the first time in years . Later that month she boarded a ship for Beirut , where her travels in the East began . She stayed first at the home of James Elroy Flecker in Lebanon , then in Baghdad , Iraq ( then a British protectorate ) , where she met the British high commissioner . By 1931 she had completed three dangerous treks into the wilderness of western Iran , parts of which no Westerner had ever visited , and had located the long - fabled Valleys of the Assassins ( Hashshashin s ) . She described these explorations in " The Valleys of the Assassins " ( 1934 ) . In 1935 she travelled to the Hadhramaut , the hinterland of southern Arabia , where only a handful of Western explorers had previously ventured , never as far or as widely as she went . She published her account of the region in three books , " The Southern Gates of Arabia : A Journey in the Hadhramaut " ( 1936 ) , " Seen In The Hadhramaut " ( 1938 ) and " A Winter in Arabia " ( 1940 ) . During World War II she joined the British Ministry of Information , and contributed to the creation of the propaganda network Ikhwan al Hurriya ( ' Brotherhood of Freedom ' ) aimed at persuading Arabs to support the Allies or at least remain neutral . These wartime experiences were described in her " Letters from Syria " ( 1942 ) and " East is West " ( 1945 ) . In 1947 , at the age of 54 , she married Stewart Perowne , a British administrator and historian . The couple did not have children , and separated in 1952 ( but did not divorce ) . During these years she wrote nothing on travel and exploration , but published a volume of miscellaneous essays , " Perseus in the Wind " ( 1948 ) and three volumes of autobiography , " Traveller ' s Prelude " ( 1950 ) , " Beyond Euphrates . Autobiography 1928 - 1933 " ( 1951 ) and " The Coast of Incense . Autobiography 1933 - 1939 " ( 1953 ) . Stewart Perowne died in 1989 . Her first extensive travels after the war were in Turkey , which were the basis of her books " Ionia a Quest " ( 1954 ) , " The Lycian Shore " ( 1956 ) , " Alexander ' s Path " ( 1958 ) and " Riding to the Tigris " ( 1959 ) . After this she continued her memoirs with " Dust in the Lion ' s Paw . Autobiography 1939 - 1946 " ( 1961 ) , and published a history of " Rome on the Euphrates : The Story of a Frontier " ( 1966 ) and another collection of essays , " The Zodiac Arch " ( 1968 ) . The last expedition of her old age was to Afghanistan ; and in 1970 she published " The Minaret of Djam : An Excursion into Afghanistan " . In her retirement at Asolo , apart from a short survey , " Turkey : A Sketch of Turkish History " ( 1971 ) , she busied herself by putting together a new collection of essays , " A Peak in Darien " ( 1976 ) , and preparing selections of her " Letters " ( 8 volumes , 1974 – 82 ; one volume , " Over the rim of the world : selected letters " , 1982 ) and of her travel writings , " The Journey ' s Echo " ( 1988 ) . She died at Asolo on 9 May 1993 , a few months after her hundredth birthday .