The explorer who survived a factory accident and became a spy

A closer look

If your childhood origin story involves getting your hair caught in a factory machine that violently rips off half your scalp, you’re basically destined to become an unkillable British spy. Freya Stark survived the gruesome accident to become one of the most formidable explorers of the interwar period. She wandered the unmapped, male-dominated Levant completely solo, charming local sheikhs, surviving dysentery, and mapping regions so obscure that the British government eventually hired her to run an anti-Nazi propaganda network in the Middle East.