Who Was T E Lawrence?

T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)British Soldier and Author
1888 - 1935

I fondly remember the first time I watched Lawrence of Arabia starring Peter O'Toole. O'Toole is a favorite actor of mine. I had a school girl crush on him back in high school when he played General Cornelius Flavius in Masada. He was quite gorgeous to this little Latina with his blond curls and dark skin in the epic movie of Lawrence.

Thomas Edward (T.E.) Lawrence was born on August 16, 1888 at Tremadoc in North Wales. He was the second of five sons of Sir Thomas Chapman and Sarah Junner. Popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence became famous for his exploits as British Military liaison to the Arab Revolt during the First World War.

Lawrence had been fascinated by archaeology since childhood. After graduating with honors from Oxford in 1910, he served as an assistant at a British Museum excavation in Iraq (then known as Mesopotamia). When war broke out with Germany in 1914, Lawrence spent a brief period in the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London, and was then posted to the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo. In 1916 the Arabs rebelled against the Turkish empire. Lawrence was sent to Mecca on a fact-finding mission, ultimately becoming the British liaison officer to the Arabs. His account of the revolt is chronicled in his classic books, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom, A Triumph" and "Revolt in the Desert."After the war Lawrence served in the British Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, where he promoted the cause of Arab independence. Despite his efforts Syria, Palestine and Iraq were mandated to France and Britain. Lawrence returned to England exhausted and disappointed. By the end of 1920, British attempts to impose a colonial rule in Iraq had provoked an open rebellion. Winston Churchill was appointed by the British Colonial Office to find a solution, and persuaded Lawrence to join him as adviser. By the summer of 1922 Churchill, with considerable aid from Lawrence, had achieved a settlement of the situation.In 1922 Lawrence resigned his position with the Colonial Office and enlisted in the RAF under an assumed name. After four months he was discovered by the press and discharged. With the help of a highly-placed friends he re-enlisted in the Tank Corps as 'Thomas Edward Shaw'. Between 1922 and early 1927 Lawrence revised "Seven Pillars" for publication, and edited an abridgement of the book called "Revolt in the Desert." Half way through this work he succeeded in transferring back to the RAF.
Taking on Arab costume himself, he began to work with Feisal to launch a fullscale revolt of the tribes. In 1916 he was captured subjected to beatings and homosexual rape by the Turkish governor of Deraa, ''an ardent paederast'' (Lawrence's own term). Though he escaped, Lawrence was shattered by the experience. ''I gave away the only possession we are born into the world with - our bodily integrity,'' he later wrote. Lawrence's masochist tendencies became much later public when a Sunday newspaper published an interview with a former Tank Corps private who carried out ritual floggings, at Lawrence's request, from 1925 to 1934. Professor A.W. Lawrence, the youngest member of the family and his brother's literary executor, confessed in an interview in 1986 that Lawrence hated the thought of sex. "He had read any amount of medieval literature about characters - some of them saints, some of them not - who had quelled sexual longings by beatings. And that's what he did."

Peter O'Toole in the title role repeated Lawrence's fatal motorcycle accident when a towing bar from the camera car snapped and sent the trailer-mounted cycle straight toward a ditch.

"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 beshining for me. When we came." (from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1926, dedication)

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

—T. E. Lawrence from "Seven Pillars of Wisdom

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/lawrence.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence

http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/lawrencete.htm

For further reading:

Lawrence and the Arabs by R. Graves (1927); Lawrence of Arabia by R. H. Kiernan (1935); T.E. Lawrence by A.W. Lawrence (1937); Golden Reign by C.S. Smith (1949); Lawrence of Arabia by R Aldington (1955); Private Shaw and Public Shaw by S. Weintraub (1963); Lawrence of Arabia by R. Payne (1966); Desert and Stars: A Biography of Lawrence of Arabia by F. Armitage (1955); T.E. Lawrence: A Readers' Guide by F. Clemens (1973); Lawrence of Arabia by P. Knightley (1976); T.E. Lawrence by D.S. Stewart (1977); A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence by John E. Mack (1978); Lawrence of Arabia by K. Allen (1978); T.E. Lawrence by S.E. Tabachnick (1978); Lawrence of Arabia by R. Ebert and R.M. Schofield (1979); T.E. Lawrence by R. Warde (1987); T.E. Lawrence by M. Yardley (1987); The Wounded Spirit by J. Meyers (1989); A Touch of Genius: The Life of T.E. Lawrence by Malcolm Brown (1989); The Golden Wrrior by L. James (1990); Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T.E. Lawrence by Jeremy Wilson (1990) Garland of Legends by S.A. Sugarman (1992); Lawrence of Arabia by J. Wilson (1992); Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia by Michael Asher (1999); The Waters of Babylon by David Stevens (2000) -