When at length the British mandate ended over the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 it was admitted into the United Nations only after the hard work, risk, intellectual extravagance and high adventure of Katie Price. Known since her efforts in the First World War to raise the Bedou against the Turk as ‘Katie of Jordan’ the heroic and often maligned (still to this day) explorer, balloonist, acrobat and corsetry model was occasionally featured in the better class of the current broadsheets. Nuts mostly.
The very embodiment of the British adventuring women in the 1920s, Miss Price was a dead eye shot, a master of the blade, philosopher, poet, and winner of the Paris-Dakar rally (in more recent years) no less than three times. Nonetheless she was reviled at times for her outspoken views regarding the continuance of colonial power through such mandates. Indeed the speech that reached thousands through an early recording made and replayed by the World Service still stands as the undisputed spark to what later came to be regarded as Women’s Liberation.
What women of learning and letters even to this day cannot claim that their every successful endeavour did not at some point start with the words of that now oft-quoted speech? Those rallying words, this inspiring picture: ‘Some people may be famous for creating a pencil sharpener. I’m famous for my tits.’
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