T. E. Lawrence, 1888-1935, Anglo-Irish; in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published 1922.
His own government with other ‘Great Powers’ of the day threw out promises he had made to his Arab allies and carved up the Middle East, former Ottoman lands, to their own benefit.
After an effort on his part of astonishing daring, strategy, tactics, acculturation, imagination, risk and love.
After 20 years in the army, in 1935, T. E. Lawrence went to live, a recluse, in his cottage of 700 square feet in Dorset, England.
A man whose paeans to life in the desert are superb, lived in a tiny house in Dorset.
He was living there when he died, two months later, in a fatal motorcycle crash in 1935.
Winston Churchill’s eulogy of T. E. Lawrence:
“I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again.”
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Krak des Chevaliers, built between 1140 and 1170. One of the Crusader castles in Syria which T.E. Lawrence studied on a 1000 mile tour alone in 1909 while at Jesus College, Oxford.
Severely damaged in the current war in Syria
Written for one of his companions in the Arab Campaign whom he loved and who died.
To S.A.
I recently viewed David McLean’s masterpiece,
Lawrence of Arabia … the third time.
The man was truly a glorious enigma.
David, we seem to be within hours of Boris Johnson’s election to be the. next British Tory prime minister.
He has the same education as TE Lawrence. But y’day, he was excoriated on the floor of the House for his racism and for calling the Scots “verminous”.
You look around from one end of the world to another. On this, Churchill was right… Sarah
Boris is the very model of an ego
driven Sassanach imbecile 🤔
Perhaps if gives back Berwick-upon-Tweed
to Scotland, from whence it was stolen,
the Scots may one day forgive him 🏴