Zahra Freeth:
Born in India in 1925, Zahra Freeth spent her childhood in Kuwait where her father, H.R.P Dickson (died 1959) , was Political Agent. Although she learned to speak Arabic and she inherited from both her parents (Violet her mother died (1991)) knowledge and love of Arabs. She has previously written two books on Kuwait was my home (Published 1956) and Kuwait: prospect and reality with Victor Winstone (Published 1972), and one on Guyana, Run softly, Demerara (Published 1960), based on the four years she spent three with her husband. Zahra Freeth has two children and now lives in Essex in UK.
Aerial view of Kuwait, 1968
Naif Gate, 1947
Jahra Gate, 1969
Seif Place
A New Look at Kuwait:
In Kuwait: prospect and reality Zahra Freeth collaborated with Victor Winstone to produce a comprehensive history of Kuwait. In this present book she returns to more personal theme, with highly readable portrait of the great new city that has now replaced the more vividly described in Kuwait was my home.
Bazaar,1952
Old Kuwait,1952
Patterns in concrete
Commercial Area, Kuwait Town 1969
Violet receiving vistors from Saudi Arabia
Kuwait has changed not only in its outward appearance, where mud-built houses have replaced by an ever-spreading concrete landscape, but more significantly in out-look way of life of its people. Since Zahra Freeth spent her childhood in Kuwait in days before oil was discovered, she is able to draw telling contracts between old and new, and her recollections of scenes now totally disappeared throw into sharp relief her description of modern Kuwait. Every aspect of Kuwait has been affected by the fabulous prosperity of the past twenty-five years, and by introducing us to wide variety of Arabs from every social group the author shows us how individual Kuwaitis, both townsmen and badawins, have adapted to changing society. In particular her embassies changes in the life of women, as the young educated girls find new freedom outside harem.
Street scene outside the National Assembly Building
Kuwait National Petroluem Building
Included among her portraits of Kuwait personalities is Violet Dickson, the author mother, who has lived most of her life in Kuwait and through whom Zahra Freeth is able to keep in touch with sections of Kuwait life unknown to journalists and casual visitors.
The Hindal family
A Shop in Kuwait market ,1952
There may be some whom still think of Arabia as a land of camels and nomad tribes. This book will show them the new Arabia. Even those who are familiar with the scope of oil development in the Gulf will gain from it a closer knowledge of the people of the area and how, in a comparatively short time, they have moved out of the Middle Ages through their own industrial revolution and into the twentieth century.