Freya Stark

Dame Freya Madeline Stark, Mrs Perowne, DBE 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 autobiographical works and essays. She was one of the first nonArabians to travel through the southern Arabian Deserts.

Stark was born onJanuary 1893 in Paris, where her parents were studying art. Her mother, Flora, was an Italian of PolishGerman 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.

Source: Wikipedia