T. E. Lawrence - Wikipedia

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Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia"
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA


Images
1. T.E. Lawrence and archaeological director Leonard Woolley at the British Museum excavations of Hittite city of Carchemish with a Hittite slab [near Aleppo]
2. RAF Lt Colonel T.E. Lawrence circa 1925
3. Lawrence in 1918
4. George Brough and Thomas Edward Lawrence AKA 'Lawrence of Arabia' seated on his Superior SS100 in 1930

1. Background from {[https://telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/]}
"A Brief Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
August 16 1888
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadog, in North Wales. He was the second of five boys to be born to Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman, of the Anglo-Irish landowning class, and Sarah Junner.
In the mid 1880s, Lawrence’s father had left behind his wife, Edith, and four daughters at the family estate in County Westmeath, Ireland, to set up home with Sarah, who was the family’s governess. Thomas Chapman was never divorced from Edith, and the stigma that surrounded living out of wedlock at the time caused Thomas and Sarah to move many times over the next few years to avoid detection. Lawrence was an assumed name. Their first child, Montague Robert (Bob), was born in Dublin in 1885.
The port of Porthmadog in North Wales was the landing point for the ferry from Ireland, and it was in a rented house in nearby Tremadog that Thomas Edward (Ned) was born.

1889-96
The Lawrences continued to move around as more sons arrived. William George (Will) was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in 1889. The family lived in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany, France, from 1891, moving temporarily to St Helier, Jersey, for the birth of Frank Helier in 1893. In 1894 they returned to England to live in the New Forest.

1896-1907
In 1896 the family moved to Oxford so that the boys could attend the fee-paying City of Oxford High School, which had recently been opened, primarily to serve the needs of the sons of University lecturers. A fifth son, Arnold Walter, was born in 1900. Although Lawrence’s parents were devout Christians, they were ‘living in sin’ as it would have been called at the time. Yet there is ample evidence that they were a happy, united family. They were regular worshippers at St Aldate’s Church where an evangelical brand of Christianity was practised. During his boyhood, Lawrence became increasingly absorbed in the medieval world, and began to undertake a series of ambitious bicycle journeys around England, Wales and France to further his studies.

1907-10
Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. In summer 1909, he undertook an arduous 1,000-mile walking tour of Syria to study Crusader castles for his thesis, The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the XIIth Century.

1910-14
Lawrence was awarded a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Under the influence of David Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he spent four
seasons working as an archaeologist on the British Museum’s excavations of the Hittite city of Carchemish, on what is now the border between Turkey and Syria. It was at Carchemish that he met Dahoum, a young Arab boy working as an assistant on the site, who became his great friend and is widely assumed to be the ‘S.A.’ in Lawrence’s dedication in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In January 1914, Lawrence and his fellow archaeologist Leonard Woolley assisted in a survey of the Sinai Desert funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund, publishing their findings as The Wilderness of Zin.

1914-16
Lawrence left Carchemish for the last time in June 1914. Following the outbreak of war, he spent a short time working in London in the Geographical Section of the War Office. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and moved to Cairo where he worked in the Military Intelligence Department. In 1915, Lawrence learned of the deaths of his brothers Frank, killed in action in France on May 9, and Will, missing in action in an observation plane over France on October 23 and presumed dead. In April 1916, Lawrence went to Basra in Mesopotamia to take part in negotiations for the release of Allied soldiers besieged in Kut.

1916-18
From October 1916, Lawrence worked as Liaison Officer to the Emir Feisal, whose Arab irregular troops became engaged in a series of guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Arab Revolt. It was these turbulent two years which provided the material for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and were the basis for his eventual fame as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Lawrence’s involvement in the Arab Revolt came to an end with the fall of Damascus in October 1918. He returned to England and commenced lobbying politicians to fulfil promises for independence made to the Arabs.

1919
Along with Emir Feisal, Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference which resulted in the Arabs being denied the freedom to the lands over which they had fought. He wrote the first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was in this year that the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
legend was created by an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who presented an ‘illustrated travelogue’ to huge audiences, first in New York, then in London and finally worldwide.
1920
After his first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was lost at Reading Station in November 1919, Lawrence spent the first weeks of the year rewriting the book from memory while ensconced in the attic of the architect Herbert Baker’s office in Barton Street, London.

1921-22
Winston Churchill approached Lawrence and, despite his initial reluctance, he accepted an appointment as Adviser on Arab Affairs at the Colonial Office. Lawrence attended a new peace conference in Cairo, which resulted in the establishment of the map of the Middle East which largely remains to this day.

1922
By summer 1922, Lawrence had completed a third draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the so-called Oxford Text. In August he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF under the assumed name of John Hume Ross.
It was his early service in the training depot at Uxbridge which provided much of the material for his book The Mint, which was not to be publicly available until 1955. It was in late 1922 that Lawrence embarked on his passion for Brough Superior motorcycles which provided him not just with transport, but with a mental escape.

1923
In January, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF after his real identity was revealed in the press. In March he enlisted in the Tank Corps in Bovington, Dorset, as a private soldier under the assumed name of Thomas Edward Shaw. It was while here that he continued to establish many important friendships including that of Thomas Hardy who lived nearby in Dorchester. Lawrence took a lease on a semi-derelict cottage near Bovington Camp – Clouds Hill – which was to become his refuge and, following its purchase, eventually his home. During this year he made his translation of Adrien Le
Corbeau’s Le Gigantesque (Forest Giant).

1924-26
Lawrence spent much of his free time during these years preparing the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which enabled him to indulge his passion for fine printed books. Offered at a price of 30 guineas, each copy was individually bound for the subscriber. The text of this version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the one best known throughout the world today. However, the effort exhausted him. He was also deeply unhappy in the Tank Corps. Following pressure on the government from his friends, concerned about his health, in 1925 he was readmitted to the RAF, stationed at Cranwell.

1927-8
The Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom appeared at the end of 1926, followed in March 1927 by Revolt in the Desert, an abridged version made available to the general public. In late 1926 he was posted to Karachi, which was then part of India, and then
Miranshah near the Afghan border. During this time he completed The Mint and began translating Homer’s Odyssey.

1929
In January, Lawrence returned to England following press stories that he had been involved in an insurrection in Afghanistan. He was stationed at RAF Cattewater (later Mount Batten) in Plymouth, from where he resumed his friendships with artists, politicians and writers. During the summer, he acted as personal assistant to his commanding officer, Wing Commander Sydney Smith, during the preparations for the prestigious Schneider Trophy seaplane race over the Solent.

1931-35
Lawrence started work on the development of high-speed rescue boats for the RAF, after witnessing the fatal crash of an RAF flying boat in Plymouth Sound. It was this work that occupied most of his final years in the RAF, taking him to postings in Hythe, Southampton and Bridlington. 1932 saw the publication of his translation of the Odyssey.

February 1935
Lawrence retired from the RAF and cycled from his last posting in Bridlington to Clouds Hill.

May 13, 1935
Lawrence fell from his Brough Superior motorcycle when he was in collision with two boys on bicycles on the road between Bovington Camp and Clouds Hill. He never regained consciousness.

May 19, 1935
Lawrence died as a result of his injuries.

May 21, 1935
Lawrence was buried at Moreton, Dorset. His funeral was attended by a large crowd including Winston Churchill, writers and artists including Augustus John, Eric Kennington and Siegfried Sassoon, and friends from his service days. Lawrence’s mother Sarah and brother Bob were travelling along the Yangtze river on their return from China, where Bob had been working as a medical missionary, when they received the news of his death; his brother Arnold was the only family member present at the funeral.


2. Background from {[https://www.pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]}
"Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), C.B., D.S.O., 1888-1935
T.E. Lawrence, 1919After an initial career as an archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence emerged from the carnage and horrors of the First World War as the famous youthful ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Following his role as intelligence officer and military adviser in the Middle East during the war, and peace-maker and diplomat afterwards, Lawrence went to extraordinary efforts to escape his fame and retreated into the obscurity of the military ‘ranks’ under various pseudonyms. A legend in his own lifetime, a complex and brilliant man with a ‘genius for friendship’ and a gifted writer, he remains to this day a person of particular fascination who attracts a variety of opinion.

The second of five brothers, Lawrence was born 16 August 1888 in Caernarvonshire, Wales. His father, Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish gentleman landowner and his mother, Sarah Junner, was of Scottish origins. She became governess to the Chapman household in Ireland but after eloping with Chapman they adopted the family name of Sarah’s father, John Lawrence. After a peripatetic early period the family settled in Oxford where Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys and Jesus College, University of Oxford. His B.A. dissertation research on Crusader castles led him to travel for the first time to the Middle East in 1909, especially within Ottoman Syria.

After university, with the help of his Oxford mentor, D.G. Hogarth (Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and member of the PEF Committee) Lawrence became an archaeologist and spent several seasons (1910-14) working with Leonard Woolley on the British Museum excavations at the Neo-Hittite site of Carchemish near Jerablus in North Syria (now on the Turkish/Syrian border).

In early 1914 Woolley and Lawrence, at the request of the British Museum, accompanied a survey party making maps in the Sinai Desert. While Lawrence undertook an archaeological survey (which he described as providing ‘archaeological colour to a political job’ as permission was required from the Turks who controlled this area) the topographical work was carried out by Captain Newcombe who later worked with Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. This survey, sponsored by the PEF, was tasked with extending southwards the previous PEF Survey of Western Palestine carried out in the 1870s. The 1914 survey (published by Woolley and Lawrence as The Wilderness of Zin, PEF Annual III, 1915) later greatly assisted Lawrence because of the surveying and map-making skills he learnt and also the first-hand knowledge he gained of the terrain, especially in the Aqaba area.

In August 1914 Lawrence joined the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London but following Turkey's entry into the war he was transferred (December 1914) to the Intelligence Department in Cairo where he joined the Arab Bureau (with D.G. Hogarth as its head). In seeking Arab support for the British war effort Lawrence and the Bureau became increasingly involved with Arab nationalist movements and politics but had to contend with French colonial rivalry and ambitions.

In June 1916 Sherif Hussein of Mecca started the Arab Revolt and in October Lawrence first visited the Hejaz. From 1916-1918 Lawrence greatly influenced the military and political strategy of the revolt and acted as principal liaison officer between the British (General Allenby) and Arab Forces (Prince Faisal). He famously led raids on the Hejaz railway, helped capture the vital seaport of Aqaba(July 1917), and conducted important military and political reconnaissance expeditions. Lawrence accompanied the Arabs in reaching Damascus (October 1918) and helped set up a provisional, but short-lived, Arab government.

In January 1919 Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference and argued vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for Arab freedom. During this period he began to write his monumental book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom – privately published in 1926. After the Conference Lawrence took up a Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From February 1921 to March 1922 Lawrence worked for Churchill in the Colonial Office and attended the Cairo Conference in March 1921 and was British representative in Transjordan, October – December 1921.

In August 1922 Lawrence joined the Royal Air Force as an Aircraftsman under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. However press publicity caused him to be dismissed in January 1923 and two months later he joined the Royal Tank Corps at Bovington, Dorset as a private under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw (legally adopted by deed poll in 1927). In 1925 he succeeded in returning to the RAF and in January 1927 he took up a posting in India (Karachi) where he started to draft a book about his early period in the RAF (The Mint published 1955). Due to false press reports about spying he was hurriedly brought back to England in January 1929 and went to RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth.

From 1929 – 1935 Lawrence was engaged in the development of RAF high speed boats (RAF 200 Class), which played an important role in rescuing airmen from the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. In February 1935 he retired from the RAF and died on 19 May 1935 after a motorcycle accident near his cottage (Clouds Hill, now National Trust) near Wareham in Dorset. He is buried in St Nicholas' Church, Moreton, Dorset.

Recommended reading
Brown, M. (ed.) 2005. Lawrence of Arabia –The Selected Letters. London: Little Books.
Lawrence, T.E. 1935. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: Jonathan Cape (many subsequent reprintings and editions).
Mack, J.E. 1998 (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder – The Life of T.E. Lawrence Harvard University Press.
Wilson, J. 1989 Lawrence of Arabia – The Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence. London: William Heinemann.
Woolley, C.L. and Lawrence, T.E. 2003. The Wilderness of Zin (PEF Annual III, revised 3rd edition). London: Stacey International."


TE Lawrence Poem Seven Pillars
"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.

Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.

Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage
ours for the moment
Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind
worms grew fat upon
Your substance.

Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,
as a memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift."

Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia"
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA


Images
1. T.E. Lawrence and archaeological director Leonard Woolley at the British Museum excavations of Hittite city of Carchemish with a Hittite slab [near Aleppo]
2. RAF Lt Colonel T.E. Lawrence circa 1925
3. Lawrence in 1918
4. George Brough and Thomas Edward Lawrence AKA 'Lawrence of Arabia' seated on his Superior SS100 in 1930

1. Background from {[https://telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/]}
"A Brief Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
August 16 1888
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadog, in North Wales. He was the second of five boys to be born to Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman, of the Anglo-Irish landowning class, and Sarah Junner.
In the mid 1880s, Lawrence’s father had left behind his wife, Edith, and four daughters at the family estate in County Westmeath, Ireland, to set up home with Sarah, who was the family’s governess. Thomas Chapman was never divorced from Edith, and the stigma that surrounded living out of wedlock at the time caused Thomas and Sarah to move many times over the next few years to avoid detection. Lawrence was an assumed name. Their first child, Montague Robert (Bob), was born in Dublin in 1885.
The port of Porthmadog in North Wales was the landing point for the ferry from Ireland, and it was in a rented house in nearby Tremadog that Thomas Edward (Ned) was born.

1889-96
The Lawrences continued to move around as more sons arrived. William George (Will) was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in 1889. The family lived in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany, France, from 1891, moving temporarily to St Helier, Jersey, for the birth of Frank Helier in 1893. In 1894 they returned to England to live in the New Forest.

1896-1907
In 1896 the family moved to Oxford so that the boys could attend the fee-paying City of Oxford High School, which had recently been opened, primarily to serve the needs of the sons of University lecturers. A fifth son, Arnold Walter, was born in 1900. Although Lawrence’s parents were devout Christians, they were ‘living in sin’ as it would have been called at the time. Yet there is ample evidence that they were a happy, united family. They were regular worshippers at St Aldate’s Church where an evangelical brand of Christianity was practised. During his boyhood, Lawrence became increasingly absorbed in the medieval world, and began to undertake a series of ambitious bicycle journeys around England, Wales and France to further his studies.

1907-10
Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. In summer 1909, he undertook an arduous 1,000-mile walking tour of Syria to study Crusader castles for his thesis, The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the XIIth Century.

1910-14
Lawrence was awarded a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Under the influence of David Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he spent four
seasons working as an archaeologist on the British Museum’s excavations of the Hittite city of Carchemish, on what is now the border between Turkey and Syria. It was at Carchemish that he met Dahoum, a young Arab boy working as an assistant on the site, who became his great friend and is widely assumed to be the ‘S.A.’ in Lawrence’s dedication in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In January 1914, Lawrence and his fellow archaeologist Leonard Woolley assisted in a survey of the Sinai Desert funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund, publishing their findings as The Wilderness of Zin.

1914-16
Lawrence left Carchemish for the last time in June 1914. Following the outbreak of war, he spent a short time working in London in the Geographical Section of the War Office. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and moved to Cairo where he worked in the Military Intelligence Department. In 1915, Lawrence learned of the deaths of his brothers Frank, killed in action in France on May 9, and Will, missing in action in an observation plane over France on October 23 and presumed dead. In April 1916, Lawrence went to Basra in Mesopotamia to take part in negotiations for the release of Allied soldiers besieged in Kut.

1916-18
From October 1916, Lawrence worked as Liaison Officer to the Emir Feisal, whose Arab irregular troops became engaged in a series of guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Arab Revolt. It was these turbulent two years which provided the material for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and were the basis for his eventual fame as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Lawrence’s involvement in the Arab Revolt came to an end with the fall of Damascus in October 1918. He returned to England and commenced lobbying politicians to fulfil promises for independence made to the Arabs.

1919
Along with Emir Feisal, Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference which resulted in the Arabs being denied the freedom to the lands over which they had fought. He wrote the first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was in this year that the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
legend was created by an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who presented an ‘illustrated travelogue’ to huge audiences, first in New York, then in London and finally worldwide.
1920
After his first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was lost at Reading Station in November 1919, Lawrence spent the first weeks of the year rewriting the book from memory while ensconced in the attic of the architect Herbert Baker’s office in Barton Street, London.

1921-22
Winston Churchill approached Lawrence and, despite his initial reluctance, he accepted an appointment as Adviser on Arab Affairs at the Colonial Office. Lawrence attended a new peace conference in Cairo, which resulted in the establishment of the map of the Middle East which largely remains to this day.

1922
By summer 1922, Lawrence had completed a third draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the so-called Oxford Text. In August he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF under the assumed name of John Hume Ross.
It was his early service in the training depot at Uxbridge which provided much of the material for his book The Mint, which was not to be publicly available until 1955. It was in late 1922 that Lawrence embarked on his passion for Brough Superior motorcycles which provided him not just with transport, but with a mental escape.

1923
In January, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF after his real identity was revealed in the press. In March he enlisted in the Tank Corps in Bovington, Dorset, as a private soldier under the assumed name of Thomas Edward Shaw. It was while here that he continued to establish many important friendships including that of Thomas Hardy who lived nearby in Dorchester. Lawrence took a lease on a semi-derelict cottage near Bovington Camp – Clouds Hill – which was to become his refuge and, following its purchase, eventually his home. During this year he made his translation of Adrien Le
Corbeau’s Le Gigantesque (Forest Giant).

1924-26
Lawrence spent much of his free time during these years preparing the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which enabled him to indulge his passion for fine printed books. Offered at a price of 30 guineas, each copy was individually bound for the subscriber. The text of this version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the one best known throughout the world today. However, the effort exhausted him. He was also deeply unhappy in the Tank Corps. Following pressure on the government from his friends, concerned about his health, in 1925 he was readmitted to the RAF, stationed at Cranwell.

1927-8
The Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom appeared at the end of 1926, followed in March 1927 by Revolt in the Desert, an abridged version made available to the general public. In late 1926 he was posted to Karachi, which was then part of India, and then
Miranshah near the Afghan border. During this time he completed The Mint and began translating Homer’s Odyssey.

1929
In January, Lawrence returned to England following press stories that he had been involved in an insurrection in Afghanistan. He was stationed at RAF Cattewater (later Mount Batten) in Plymouth, from where he resumed his friendships with artists, politicians and writers. During the summer, he acted as personal assistant to his commanding officer, Wing Commander Sydney Smith, during the preparations for the prestigious Schneider Trophy seaplane race over the Solent.

1931-35
Lawrence started work on the development of high-speed rescue boats for the RAF, after witnessing the fatal crash of an RAF flying boat in Plymouth Sound. It was this work that occupied most of his final years in the RAF, taking him to postings in Hythe, Southampton and Bridlington. 1932 saw the publication of his translation of the Odyssey.

February 1935
Lawrence retired from the RAF and cycled from his last posting in Bridlington to Clouds Hill.

May 13, 1935
Lawrence fell from his Brough Superior motorcycle when he was in collision with two boys on bicycles on the road between Bovington Camp and Clouds Hill. He never regained consciousness.

May 19, 1935
Lawrence died as a result of his injuries.

May 21, 1935
Lawrence was buried at Moreton, Dorset. His funeral was attended by a large crowd including Winston Churchill, writers and artists including Augustus John, Eric Kennington and Siegfried Sassoon, and friends from his service days. Lawrence’s mother Sarah and brother Bob were travelling along the Yangtze river on their return from China, where Bob had been working as a medical missionary, when they received the news of his death; his brother Arnold was the only family member present at the funeral.


2. Background from {[https://www.pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]}
"Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), C.B., D.S.O., 1888-1935
T.E. Lawrence, 1919After an initial career as an archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence emerged from the carnage and horrors of the First World War as the famous youthful ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Following his role as intelligence officer and military adviser in the Middle East during the war, and peace-maker and diplomat afterwards, Lawrence went to extraordinary efforts to escape his fame and retreated into the obscurity of the military ‘ranks’ under various pseudonyms. A legend in his own lifetime, a complex and brilliant man with a ‘genius for friendship’ and a gifted writer, he remains to this day a person of particular fascination who attracts a variety of opinion.

The second of five brothers, Lawrence was born 16 August 1888 in Caernarvonshire, Wales. His father, Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish gentleman landowner and his mother, Sarah Junner, was of Scottish origins. She became governess to the Chapman household in Ireland but after eloping with Chapman they adopted the family name of Sarah’s father, John Lawrence. After a peripatetic early period the family settled in Oxford where Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys and Jesus College, University of Oxford. His B.A. dissertation research on Crusader castles led him to travel for the first time to the Middle East in 1909, especially within Ottoman Syria.

After university, with the help of his Oxford mentor, D.G. Hogarth (Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and member of the PEF Committee) Lawrence became an archaeologist and spent several seasons (1910-14) working with Leonard Woolley on the British Museum excavations at the Neo-Hittite site of Carchemish near Jerablus in North Syria (now on the Turkish/Syrian border).

In early 1914 Woolley and Lawrence, at the request of the British Museum, accompanied a survey party making maps in the Sinai Desert. While Lawrence undertook an archaeological survey (which he described as providing ‘archaeological colour to a political job’ as permission was required from the Turks who controlled this area) the topographical work was carried out by Captain Newcombe who later worked with Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. This survey, sponsored by the PEF, was tasked with extending southwards the previous PEF Survey of Western Palestine carried out in the 1870s. The 1914 survey (published by Woolley and Lawrence as The Wilderness of Zin, PEF Annual III, 1915) later greatly assisted Lawrence because of the surveying and map-making skills he learnt and also the first-hand knowledge he gained of the terrain, especially in the Aqaba area.

In August 1914 Lawrence joined the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London but following Turkey's entry into the war he was transferred (December 1914) to the Intelligence Department in Cairo where he joined the Arab Bureau (with D.G. Hogarth as its head). In seeking Arab support for the British war effort Lawrence and the Bureau became increasingly involved with Arab nationalist movements and politics but had to contend with French colonial rivalry and ambitions.

In June 1916 Sherif Hussein of Mecca started the Arab Revolt and in October Lawrence first visited the Hejaz. From 1916-1918 Lawrence greatly influenced the military and political strategy of the revolt and acted as principal liaison officer between the British (General Allenby) and Arab Forces (Prince Faisal). He famously led raids on the Hejaz railway, helped capture the vital seaport of Aqaba(July 1917), and conducted important military and political reconnaissance expeditions. Lawrence accompanied the Arabs in reaching Damascus (October 1918) and helped set up a provisional, but short-lived, Arab government.

In January 1919 Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference and argued vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for Arab freedom. During this period he began to write his monumental book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom – privately published in 1926. After the Conference Lawrence took up a Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From February 1921 to March 1922 Lawrence worked for Churchill in the Colonial Office and attended the Cairo Conference in March 1921 and was British representative in Transjordan, October – December 1921.

In August 1922 Lawrence joined the Royal Air Force as an Aircraftsman under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. However press publicity caused him to be dismissed in January 1923 and two months later he joined the Royal Tank Corps at Bovington, Dorset as a private under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw (legally adopted by deed poll in 1927). In 1925 he succeeded in returning to the RAF and in January 1927 he took up a posting in India (Karachi) where he started to draft a book about his early period in the RAF (The Mint published 1955). Due to false press reports about spying he was hurriedly brought back to England in January 1929 and went to RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth.

From 1929 – 1935 Lawrence was engaged in the development of RAF high speed boats (RAF 200 Class), which played an important role in rescuing airmen from the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. In February 1935 he retired from the RAF and died on 19 May 1935 after a motorcycle accident near his cottage (Clouds Hill, now National Trust) near Wareham in Dorset. He is buried in St Nicholas' Church, Moreton, Dorset.

Recommended reading
Brown, M. (ed.) 2005. Lawrence of Arabia –The Selected Letters. London: Little Books.
Lawrence, T.E. 1935. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: Jonathan Cape (many subsequent reprintings and editions).
Mack, J.E. 1998 (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder – The Life of T.E. Lawrence Harvard University Press.
Wilson, J. 1989 Lawrence of Arabia – The Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence. London: William Heinemann.
Woolley, C.L. and Lawrence, T.E. 2003. The Wilderness of Zin (PEF Annual III, revised 3rd edition). London: Stacey International."


TE Lawrence Poem Seven Pillars
"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.

Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.

Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage
ours for the moment
Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind
worms grew fat upon
Your substance.

Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,
as a memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift."

Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA