Zahra Freeth

hideThis article has multiple issues. Please help improve it

or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when
to remove these template messages)
The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability
guideline for books. Please help to demonstrate the notability
of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are
independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it
beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown,
the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted.
Find sources: "Zahra Freeth" – news · newspapers · books · scholar ·
JSTOR (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template
message)

This article needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable
sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Zahra Freeth" – news · newspapers · books · scholar ·
JSTOR (December 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template
message)

(Irene) Zahra Dickson Freeth (1925 - 20 May 2015[1][2])

was a British author who wrote primarily about the Middle
East. She was the daughter of H. R. P. Dickson (died 1959)
and Dame Violet Dickson (died 4 January 1991).

Contents
1 Life
2 Legacy
3 Books by Zahra Freeth
4 References
5 Further reading

Life
Zahra Dickson grew up in Kuwait. There she and her family
would spend time collecting animal and plant specimens for
the Natural History Museum and Kew Gardens, discovering
one plant and two insects that were previously unknown to
science. One of the latter, a grasshopper, was named after
Zahra: Utubius syriacus zahrae,[3] now known simply as
Utubius syriacus.[4] She later attended boarding schools in
England, including Cheltenham Ladies College, and studied
for her BA at Girton College, University of Cambridge.[5] Her
first book, Kuwait Was My Home, was published in 1956. She
accompanied her husband Richard Freeth[6][7] to the bauxite
mining town of Mackenzie, now known as Linden, in British
Guiana (now Guyana) and wrote Run Softly, Demerara
(1960) about her experiences there.

Her later writings were on Middle Eastern topics, including a

children's book, Rashid of Saudi Arabia (2001). She lived in
Essex. Her brother, Hanmer Yorke Warrington Saud
("Dickie") Dickson, MBE, who had served as H.M. Acting
Commissioner in Anguilla,[8][9] died in May 2005.

Zahra Freeth died on 20 May 2015 after a short illness. Her

obituary in the Girton College alumni magazine described
her as 'a respected author who wrote about Kuwait and
Arabia in the days before the oil boom'[10]

Legacy
Freeth's writings are of use to modern-day anthropologists
studying the change in Kuwaiti society. One such study
commented that the "transformation of social values is
clearly revealed in the history writings of Kuwait in the 1940s
and 1950s, particularly in the work of Zahra Freeth, the
daughter of a British diplomat who lived in Kuwait before and
after the discovery of oil."[11]

Books by Zahra Freeth

Kuwait Was My Home. London: Allen and Unwin (1956)
Run Softly, Demerara. London: Allen and Unwin (1960)
A New Look at Kuwait. London: Allen and Unwin (1972),
ISBN 9780049530089
Kuwait: Prospect and Reality. London: Allen and Unwin
(1972) with H. V. F. Winstone
Explorers of Arabia: From Renaissance to the End of the
Victorian Era. London: Allen and Unwin (1978) edited by
H. V. F. Winstone and Zahra Freeth
"A Journey to Hail". Saudi Aramco World 31 (3)
(May/June 1980) with H. V. F. Winstone
The Arab of the Desert by H. R. P Dickson (1983), 3rd
edition revised and abridged; edited by Robert Wilson
and Zahra Freeth
 Rashid of Saudi Arabia. Lutterworth Press (2001) with
Gordon Stowell, ISBN 9780718823900
Zahra Freeth also wrote the introduction to
Traditional Architecture in Kuwait and the Northern
Gulf by Ronald Lewcock. London: Art and
Archaeology Research Papers and The United
Bank of Kuwait (1978)

References
1. Creating the Arabian Gulf: The British Raj and the
Invasions of the Gulf, Paul Rich, Lexington Books, 2009,
p. 216
2. "FREETH - Deaths Announcements - Telegraph
Announcements". announcements.telegraph.co.uk.
Archived from the original on 25 December 2017.
Retrieved 25 December 2017.
3. https://issuu.com/girtoncollege/docs/the_year_2016__s
ingle-sided_/107
4. http://orthoptera.speciesfile.org/Common/basic/Taxa.as
px?TaxonNameID=1117309
5. https://issuu.com/girtoncollege/docs/the_year_2016__s
ingle-sided_/107
6. http://www.arabtimesonline.com/wp-
content/uploads/pdf/2020/feb/20/11.pdf
7. https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/gb165-
0364-violet-dickson-collection.pdf
 8. Laws of Anguilla 1974–1976, p. 345
9. Warsidaha Ururka Ingiriiska Iyo Soomaalida (Journal of
the Anglo-Somali Society), collected vols. 33–40, The
Anglo-Somali Society, 2003, p. 63
10. https://issuu.com/girtoncollege/docs/the_year_2016__s
ingle-sided_/107
11. Zaha F. M. M. Alsuwailan, 'The Impact of Societal
Values on Kuwaiti Women and the Role of Education',
PhD thesis 2006, online at
https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=
3141&context=utk_graddiss

Further reading
Obituary
Article about Zahra Freeth