In the first of our series of famous people who were educated at home, we focussed on Aleen Cust, Britain’s first woman vet. Aleen grew up during the period that gave rise to the Education Act of 1880 which made school attendance compulsory for all children in Britain between the ages of five and ten. Although it is no longer compulsory for children in the UK to attend school, every child has a legal right to an education, and many choose to educate their children at home.
Childhood and Education
Dame Freya Stark (1893?-1993), writer and traveller, was born in a Paris studio probably on 31 January 1893, the eldest daughter of Robert Stark, an artist, and his wife, Flora. While she was a young child her father was busy renovating houses in Devon. During the summer he painted in Italy where the family rented lodgings at Asolo. In 1903, her father remained in Devon while her mother settled at Dronero in Italy; he emigrated to Canada in 1911. Her mother invested in, and managed an Italian silk factory, whose owner later married Freya’s younger sister, Vera.
Freya was educated at home, and after completing a correspondence course she studied History at Bedford College, University of London, between 1911 and 1914. She was taken to the Alps in 1913 by William Paton Ker, an English professor to whom she was introduced by friends of her family, and formed a lifelong interest in mountaineering. During the First World War she trained at Bologna to become a nurse, and on Ker’s advice she joined an ambulance unit in Italy in 1917.
Travels and Writings
After the war Freya was frequently bedridden with illness, but when she was well enough she went climbing with Ker. Following his death in 1923, she trekked through Europe with a friend, Venetia Buddicom. In 1924, she became the second woman to climb the east face of Monte Rosa. While recovering from an ulcer she learned Arabic in order to become a governess in the Middle East, briefly studying Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies in London. In 1927, Freya lived in the Lebanon for several months and travelled through Syria with Venetia Buddicom. Her father had given her some money, and she went to visit him twice in Canada before he died in 1931.
After reading about Persia in the British Museum, Freya moved to Baghdad in 1929. She wore Arab dress and was shunned by British expats. Her journeys to Lurestan and Mazandaran enabled the War Office to make maps of the area, and her work as a journalist in Baghdad gave her information about the Kurdistan uprisings that she published in The Times. When she returned to London in 1933 she was celebrated as a female traveller, receiving a grant from the Royal Geographical Society, and becoming the first woman to receive the Burton medal from the Royal Asiatic Society. Her account of her travels The Valley of the Assassins (1934) was an immediate success. In 1935, she went to southern Arabia in search of an ancient trade route, and on her return published The Southern Gates of Arabia (1936), which was awarded the Mungo Park Medal by the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. She returned to Arabia in 1937-8 on an archaeological dig, but fell out with others and returned on her own, riding through the desert on a camel.
During the Second World War Freya joined the Ministry of Information and worked as an expert on south Arabia in Aden, Yemen and Egypt. She also travelled in Iraq and India, returning from Delhi to Tehran in a government car which she then sold privately. Although wayward, she was invited by the Ministry to lecture on Palestine in the United States in 1943-4. She also spoke to women’s groups in India in 1945, and after the war returned to northern Italy where she set up English reading rooms. She published a series of essays, Perseus in the Wind (1948), and the first volume of her autobiography, Traveller’s Prelude (1950), which includes an account of her early life.
In 1947, Freya married a diplomatic colleague, Stewart Perowne, and accompanied him on a posting to Barbados, but the marriage was not successful and they separated in 1952. She continued her autobiography in Beyond the Euphrates (1951), The Coast of Incense (1953), and Dust in the Lion’s Paw (1961). Between 1974 and 1982 she published eight volumes of her letters at her own expense. In her later years, she moved away from journalism and government diplomacy and journeyed to places of classical antiquity, following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great and Lucullus. She made other journeys to Afghanistan and Nepal, went rafting on the Euphrates with a BBC film crew, and horseriding around Annapurna. She received further medals and honorary doctorates; in 1953 was named CBE, and in 1972 became a dame of the British Empire. She died in Asolo in 1993.
Freya Stark was an avid and courageous traveller. Biographers attribute her intrepid nature and strong motivation to travel to her early childhood. Also shaped by her early childhood and education at home, her evocative travel writing continues to be appreciated by readers all over the world.
Source: Peter Hansen, ‘Stark, Dame Freya Madeline (1893?-1993)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, May 2009
