Anderson's supporting characters are colourful, even if none approaches Lawrence in stature and pathos. Prufer was a brilliant linguist and an energetic lothario – his many girlfriends included Minna "Fanny" Weizmann, whose brother Chaim was Europe's most prominent Zionist and went on to become Israel's first president. His vision of the Middle East was, however, narrowed by the usual ethnic blinkers (cowardly Arabs, docile Jews), and he ended the war scheming irrelevantly.

The strange thing is that Lawrence apparently disliked many aspects of service as an enlisted man. He made no real effort to fit in - on one occasion when an officer berated him, Lawrence smarted off by answering in Arabic - and did not hide his true identity. Lawrence bought a series of high-end motorcycles which no airman could have afforded on his service pay (and died when he crashed the last of these). He found time for publishing and translation projects throughout his time in the RAF, and continued to socialize with political and literary celebrities such as Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, and even Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hardy. This newspaper called Lawrence’s 1926 self-published autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom “one of the most stirring stories of our time”. (Personally, I find it a bore.) Lawrence toned down the episode in Deraa in which the Bey (Governor) sodomised him; Fiennes follows most biographers and accepts circumstantial accounts. He is coy about homosexuality: “There is, however, evidence to suggest that Lawrence might have had more sexual interest in men.” The paid-for whippings of the later years are noted, though Fiennes finds it “difficult to say whether he [Lawrence] wanted to be whipped for pleasure, punishment, or both”. T. E. Lawrence". London Borough of Hillingdon. 23 October 2007. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013 . Retrieved 12 September 2010. Aaronsohn and his fellow agents felt a similar revulsion for their Arab neighbours in Palestine. The agents' dishonest depiction of the Turks' evacuation of the port city of Jaffa in 1917 as a vicious anti-Jewish pogrom was "one of the most consequential disinformation campaigns" of the war, for it was accepted unquestioningly in the west and hardened the opinion of world Jewry in favour of Zionism.

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Found: Lawrence of Arabia's lost text". The Independent. 13 April 1997. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022 . Retrieved 18 January 2020. Graves, Richard Perceval (1976). Lawrence of Arabia and His World. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-13054-4– via Internet Archive (archive.org).

In 1918, Lowell Thomas went to Jerusalem where he met Lawrence, "whose enigmatic figure in Arab uniform fired his imagination", in the words of author Rex Hall. [132] Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot a great deal of film and many photographs involving Lawrence. Thomas produced a stage presentation entitled With Allenby in Palestine which included a lecture, dancing, and music [133] and depicted the Middle East as exotic, mysterious, sensuous, and violent. [133] As his understanding of the Arab peoples and particularly his ability to relate to and influence their military leaders grew, he rose in importance and rank, eventually becoming a colonel. The book outlines his exploits in the campaign, which were a combination of military tactical smarts, leadership and incredible bravery in brutally dangerous conditions - terrible weather, limited supplies and usually facing an enemy of superior numbers. Most of his battles were carried out by his small band of about 600 Arab soldiers. As the war wound down, his greatest concern was to make sure that Arab lands would come under Arab control. Fiennes ably leads the reader through the vagaries of the Revolt, conjuring Royal Navy frigates steaming into ports and drummers beating out a march, as tribesmen advance on camels in a line a quarter of a mile long – with Lawrence and the Sheiks in the front, amid banners of purple silk and a thousand bodyguards. (I know you’ve seen the film.) The archaeologist smokescreen military intelligence missions in the Middle East were crucial for the allies' ultimate victory with most of the fuel resources for the Central Powers cut by the British forces.Lawrence's public image resulted in part from the sensationalised reporting of the Arab revolt by American journalist Lowell Thomas, as well as from Seven Pillars of Wisdom. On 19 May 1935, six days after being injured in a motorcycle accident in Dorset, Lawrence died at the age of 46. Aldington, Richard (1955). Lawrence of Arabia: A biographical enquiry. London: Collins. ISBN 978-1-122-22259-4. Crucial to the Zionist effort was broadening its appeal to western policymakers, prominent among whom was a breed of well-heeled British romantics who floated around the Middle East offering solutions of breathtaking (and often contradictory) simplicity to problems that even now are considered intractable. The Yorkshire landowner Sir Mark Sykes was the nonpareil of these meddlesome amateurs; in 1916 he carved up the Middle East in a secret deal with France, only to propose an alliance of Jews, Arabs and Armenians that would freeze the French out. Sykes's Christian faith was cheered by the idea of a Jewish return to the Holy Land; he adopted Zionism and became an ally of Aaronsohn. It was Sykes who announced the British cabinet's decision to endorse a "Jewish national home" with the immortal words – to its future first president – "Dr Weizmann, it's a boy!"

Wilson 1989, p.329: Describes a very early argument for letting the Ottomans stay in Medina in a November 1916 letter from Clayton. Simpson, Andrew R. B. (2011). Another Life: Lawrence After Arabia. History Press. pp.278–9. ISBN 978-0752466446. Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO (16 August 1888– 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt (1916–1918) and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign (1915–1918) 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. Lawrence, T. E. "Introduction, Chapter1" (PDF). Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 August 2016. Lawrence claimed that he ran away from home around 1905 and served for a few weeks as a boy soldier with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, from which he was bought out. [18] However, no evidence of this appears in army records. [19] [20] Travels, antiquities, and archaeology [ edit ] Leonard Woolley ( left) and Lawrence in their excavation house at Carchemish, c. 1912I knew little of T. E. Lawrence's life. I've seen the film, but remember very little from it. Largely because of my admiration of what filmmaker David Lean did with Dr. Zhivago, I thought I'd watch his other epic, Lawrence of Arabia a little more closely. And I felt that I should familiarize myself with his story beforehand, thus the book selection. However, Lawrence was forced out of the RAF in February 1923 after his identity was exposed. He changed his name to T. E. Shaw (apparently as a consequence of his friendship with G. B. and Charlotte Shaw [149]) and joined the Royal Tank Corps later that year. [150] He was unhappy there and repeatedly petitioned to rejoin the RAF, which finally readmitted him in August 1925. [151] A fresh burst of publicity after the publication of Revolt in the Desert resulted in his assignment to bases at Karachi and Miramshah in British India (now Pakistan) in late 1926, [152] [153] where he remained until the end of 1928. At that time, he was forced to return to Britain after rumours began to circulate that he was involved in espionage activities. [154] Lawrence, T. E. (1922). Seven Pillars of Wisdom (unabridged, unpublished m.s.). text in Oxford U. collection. ISBN 0-9546418-0-9. Brown, Malcolm (2005). Lawrence of Arabia: The life, the legend. London: Thames & Hudson / [In association with] Imperial War Museum. ISBN 978-0-500-51238-8– via Internet Archive (archive.org). Minorities: Good Poems by Small Poets and Small Poems by Good Poets, edited by Jeremy Wilson, 1971. Lawrence's commonplace book includes an introduction by Wilson that explains how the poems comprising the book reflected Lawrence's life and thoughts.