Rosita Forbes

In 1920–1921 she was the first European woman to visit the Kufra Oasis in Libya (together with the Egyptian explorer Ahmed Hassanein), in a period when this was closed to Westerners.

The way she portrayed the expedition's organiser, Ahmed Hassanein, as a minor part of the journey was criticized by her book's reviewers and his colleagues, who pointed out that he was an Oxford-educated diplomat.

Rosita Forbes found an audience as a daring and witty travel writer and lecturer between the wars, and as a novelist; but her reputation was further tarnished in the 1930s by her description of walking through a flower garden with Adolf Hitler, and her meetings with Benito Mussolini.

[6] She published a book of interviews in 1940, These Men I Knew, insisting that she was only reporting their politics, not endorsing them; she also lectured in support of the British war effort in Canada and the United States.

[2] Her 1924 biography, The Sultan of the Mountains: The Life Story of Raisuli, was loosely adapted for the screen in 1972 by John Milius as The Wind and the Lion.