T.E. Lawrence Studies

In November-December 1914 Lawrence compiled a book of route-guides covering northern Sinai. This was the area the Turkish army would have to cross to attack the Suez Canal - and also the area the British Army would have to cross to advance into Palestine.

The guidebook - nearly 200 pages long - has never been reprinted: 1914 route reports are hardly relevant today. However, a small printing is now to be issued as part of the ongong scholarly edition of Lawrence’s works and correspondence published by Castle Hill Press.

Until the end of July 2008 you can order copies at a substantial discount.

There is more information on the publisher’s website:

Prospectus | Specification | News and progress reports

Suleiman Mousa, author of T. E. Lawrence, an Arab View, died in Amman yesterday. He was 88.

It is not easy, today, to imagine the perception of Lawrence and the Arab Revolt prevalent in the English-speaking world in the mid-1960s, when Suleiman’s Mousa’s book on Lawrence was first published.

At that time, European perceptions of the Arab world were still deeply coloured by the attitudes of racial and cultural superiority that had given Victorian imperialism its veneer of moral respectability. In Britain, the “Wind of Change” that was dismantling the Empire was, for most people, accompanied by resentment. There was no balanced reassessment of the ex-colonial peoples. There was also (among other things) resentment over Suez and Algeria, worry about the security of Israel, increasing concern about Soviet influence in the Arab world, and unease about future oil supplies from the Middle East.

So far as Lawrence was concerned, neither his admirers nor his critics had given much thought to the Arab contribution to the Arab Revolt. The film Lawrence of Arabia, released in 1963, reinforced, rather than correcting, racial mis-perceptions. Its portrayal of Arabs would hardly have seemed out of place in late-Victorian England. Even today, Western audiences seem unembarrassed by that fact. In the Arab world, however, the film was naturally - and rightly - resented.

No less unpardonable was the film’s assertion that popular support for the Arab Revolt had evaporated by late 1917, and that the Arabs reached Damascus only because Lawrence hired villainous mercenaries to continue the fighting. Through this deliberate lie, the film turned the Arab Revolt into Lawrence’s revolt, pinning on him personal responsibility for everything that happened thereafter.

In my opinion, the “art” of making a great (and potentially profitable) film can never justify that kind of historical distortion, least of all when the lie diminishes a people and its achievements. If scriptwriters cannot work successfully within the framework laid down by events, they should not write scripts about history.

It’s no excuse that the dramatic purpose of the lie was to undermine Lawrence, not the Arabs. A lie has to be judged by all its consequences. To much of the general public, the film’s belittling portrayal of Arab staying-power seemed to be borne out by later well publicised events such as the disastrous Six-Day War and the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s forces. But how dangerous it is to base reassuring conclusions on selected evidence! The counter-evidence was out there. Look at the Wahabite victories in the Arabian peninsula, or the Arab revolt in Mesopotamia after WWI. We really didn’t need Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda to prove that an Arab political movement can be formidable.

In the early 1960s, Suleiman Mousa’s Arab view of Lawrence was handicapped - as were Western assessments at that time - by the lack of contemporary written evidence. Oral evidence, alas, is as unreliable in the Arab world as it is elsewhere - for much the same reasons (including failing memory, self-justification, and judgements about what is it politic to say).

When Phillip Knightley put together a research team for The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia, Suleiman Mousa jumped at the chance to read the newly released British wartime files in the Public Record Office. It was during that period that I came to know him. His view of Lawrence gradually became more favourable - an experience shared by other Lawrence critics who have read the wartime papers. The change was evident in his later contributions to TV documentaries, most recently Lawrence of Arabia - the Battle for the Arab World.

Suleiman Mousa’s work had a deep and lasting influence over T.E. Lawrence scholarship. It showed how different those events looked through Arab eyes, and taught us to question the assumption that things happened - only, or indeed at all - because Lawrence wanted them to happen.

I believe that, in the long run, Western and Arab historians will reach a common view of the history of the Arab Revolt, based on all the evidence that has survived. By challenging the accepted Western view, Suleiman Mousa played an important part in that process. For that he deserves lasting recognition.

I was still a research student at the LSE when I first met Suleiman. Like many others, I found him unpretentious, sincere and extremely likeable. I am grateful to a mutual friend and to Suleiman’s family for making it possible for me to visit him in Amman shortly before he died. He was, he said, not really enjoying growing old - but the smile I remembered was still there.

Jeremy Wilson

We are currently editing the forth (and final) volume in the 1,000-page Castle Hill Press edition of T. E. Lawrence’s Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw. This covers the period from January 1929, when Lawrence returned to England after a two-year posting in India, up until his death in May 1935.

The most striking thing about this volume is the change in tone in Lawrence’s letters. That reflects what was, in reality, a radical change in his lifestyle and mood.

By the end of 1926 he was through the worst of the depression that had afflicted him in the early 1920s. Completing the subscription edition of Seven Pillars had released him from his war memories. Yet he had gone to India at the end of 1926 uncertain about the success of his subscription edition, and apprehensive about the critical reception of its public abridgement, Revolt in the Desert, published in March 1927.

In the event, both books earned high praise. Encouraged, Lawrence had completed The Mint. He had also accepted a commission for a highly-paid translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Partners in the project were Bruce Rogers, one of the world’s best-known typographers and book-designers, and Emery Walker, father-figure of the British fine-press movement. When Lawrence had left England in December 1926, his status rested on his fame as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He returned home in 1929 an established writer.

His life was no longer confined to an RAF station thousands of miles from his friends. He was again riding a Brough Superior motor-cycle. He could travel, visit people and places, make plans for improving his cottage at Clouds Hill….

No less important was the development of his RAF work. In India his role had become increasingly responsible and individual. Back in England the process continued. In 1932 he joined a team committed to developing high-speed motor-boats for the RAF. They did not know it, but their work would make possible the Air Sea Rescue service that helped save thousands of lives during WWII.

Jeremy Wilson

(Drawn from a posting on the news page of the Castle Hill Press website)

I read this recently, while preparing talks for an Arab Revolt battlefield tour in Jordan.

The title led me to hope that Polly Mohs might have unearthed lots of significant WWI intelligence documents that I had missed during my research for Lawrence of Arabia, The Authorised Biography. However, that kind of information - if it survives at all - is notoriously hard to find. The great strength of this book lies in its intellectual analysis rather than new material.

Mohs’ thesis is original and impressive. At one level she discusses the extent to which day-to-day intelligence influenced decisions in the field. At another she assesses the role of the Arab Bureau, an intelligence department, in directing British support for the Arab Revolt - and thereby influencing the course of the revolt during the critical period up to the summer of 1917. There are numerous references to T. E. Lawrence, one of the central figures in the analysis.

The study ends with capture of Akaba. Thereafter, British liaison with Feisal’s Northern Army passed to Allenby’s GHQ.

This kind of tightly focused analysis often reveals truths that more general historians overlook. For that, I think we should be grateful for Mohs’ work. On the other hand, just occasionally I felt that filtering out context had led Mohs to a conclusion that the evidence did not really justify.

Overall, I found Polly Mohs’ arguments convincing. Moreover, she has a talent for writing concise, balanced summaries of complex historical events and situations. That on its own would make this book well worth reading.

Which brings me to a thorny issue: the book is published by Routledge at £70.00. At that price, few people will see it.

In academic publishing it is usually the publisher rather than the author who sees any profit. The author (generally a salaried academic) often gets no payment at all.

Surely, there are overwhelming arguments for publishing this kind of study freely on the web, where it can benefit a far wider audience and earn the recognition it deserves.

Jeremy Wilson

Publisher’s description

Polly A. Mohs, Military Intelligence and the Arab Revolt: The First Modern Intelligence War
London, Routledge, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-415-37280-0
Hardback, xviii+238 pages, £70

In recent years I have seen several allegedly signed copies of Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert offered on eBay.

These are almost certainly forgeries, done by different people at different times. Some of the forgeries are very crude, but others are fairly passable.

Lawrence stated that he would never sign a copy of Revolt in the Desert. To my knowledge he did so only once, when he wrote a passage from Seven Pillars in the front of a copy of Revolt for his friend Charlotte Shaw (the wife of Bernard Shaw). That copy is now in the British Library. It is sometimes alleged that he also inscribed a copy for the South Waziristan Scouts, but the claim stemmed from a misleading photograph, which showed the note he sent with the book laid on to one of its front flyleaves.

If someone offers you a signed copy of Revolt in the Desert, it’s most unlikely to be genuine - however good it looks. To be credible, a signed Revolt would need a cast-iron end-to-end provenance.

Jeremy Wilson

On 12 June (Sale 2011 Lot 204) Christies NY is offering a copy of the 1926 subscribers’ edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom from the Spiro collection. The copy is bound in full contemporary vellum.

The pre-sale estimate is US$ 40,000-60,000

Postscript, 1 July.

The price fetched including buyer’s premium was $43,750

There have been several additions to www.telawrence.info during the past few days.

The Odyssey of Homer, translated form the Greek by T. E. Lawrence

• The Invocation, Book I, Book II, Book III and the Translator’s Note are now online. More will follow shortly.

T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw, 1928

• The letters published in this volume are now listed in the contents index for Lawrence’s writings, both under 1928 and under Charlotte Shaw. As these additions suggest, the volume contains a substantial amount of previously unpublished source material.
• In addition, Hazel Bell’s index to the volume is being added to the Union Index, initially as a supplement at the foot of each page. The supplements will be integrated as time permits.

T. E. Lawrence, Correspondence with Bernard and Charlotte Shaw 1928 is the latest volume in the definitive T.E. Lawrence Letters series. The book is currently in production and will be issued to subscribers in July. More information>>

Originally posted on the T. E. Lawrence Studies list on 23 June 2007. Images linked from this post open in new windows.

Derek Norwell, one of the main contributors to the telawrence.net project, stayed with us last night. This morning he drove me across to Dorchester (40-miles from here) to look at the T.E. Lawrence exhibition at the Dorset County Museum.

The exhibition, which runs from 16 June to 29 September, is called The Man and the Myth: Lawrence of Arabia. A publicity flyer reads: ‘Soldier, scholar, hero, recluse… from exploits in Arabia to quieter times in Dorset, T E Lawrence continued to reinvent himself. The Man and the Myth explores his extraordinary life story through photographs, letters and personal effects.’ I had no idea what to expect.

Unlike a previous Lawrence exhibition held at the museum some years ago, this one occupies the museum’s main room for temporary exhibitions. In the past I have visited art shows there. It is quite a big space, as the photographs show. By comparison with the Imperial War Museum’s densely-packed exhibition T.E.Lawrence, The Life, the legend (1985-6), the room seemed airy. Also, we arrived soon after opening-time, before the summer tourists.

General view of the exhibition room seen from the entrance
The right-hand wall seen from the entrance

The journey round the exhibition is shaped - to some extent - by a number of wall panels that provide an outline biography. Topics include:

‘Early years’ (photo)
‘Family and Oxford’
‘The Arab Revolt’
‘Lawrence the celebrity’
‘Lawrence the soldier and airman’
‘Lawrence the writer’
‘Clouds Hill’
‘Death of the man - birth of the legend’

The panels seemed to me to strike the right balance between text-length and illustration. They are supplemented by captions for the individual exhibits.

As you walk in, the first thing you see is a Brough Superior motorcycle. This, it turns out, is not one of Lawrence’s Broughs. Nevertheless, it makes a powerful statement - as Lawrence’s did. A Brough Superior is a Brough Superior, whoever it belongs to. Astride a Brough Superior, Lawrence was no ordinary aircraftman.

Brough - front view
Brough - rear view

The organisers have assumed that most people will start circulating round the room from left to right. So the first panels on the left-hand wall cover Lawrence’s background and youth. There is a showcase containing the two volumes of Crusader Castles (Golden Cockerel Press, 1936) followed by material from the Palestine Exploration fund on the Sinai survey. This includes photographs and facsimiles, but also some original items including plans.

The approach has been to show interesting sample material, not to be comprehensive. That doubtless reflects the space and resources available, and the relative ease of borrowing exhibits from some institutions, but not form others. Thus Lawrence’s archaeological work is represented by the Wilderness of Zin expedition, rather than photographs or materials from Carchemish.

The next case contains wartime material brought back to England by V.D. Siddons, who first served in the Hejaz as member of ‘C’ Flight, 14 Squadron RFC. Material from the collection is normally on display at the Bovington Tank Museum, where it is on long-term deposit.

After the Siddons showcase the layout of the exhibition leaves visitors with several options. Ahead, to the left, is a children’s activity area. Children are invited to dress up in Arab costume and look in a wall mirror to see whether they look like Lawrence. Next to that is a deep sand box, from which you can dig up archaeological finds. Opposite, in a kind of tent, there is a low table with a colouring pad and map-jigsaw. There were no children during our visit, but I assume the museum would not give up so much space if these features were unpopular.

The children’s area reminded me of another thing: few children were expected to visit the IWM’s exhibition, even though they paid no entry fee. The IWM is normally packed with parties of school children but, as Lawrence is not on the National Curriculum, teachers had no incentive to show them the exhibition. At Dorchester, however, children come in to the museum with their parents. So they may get a wider education.

Leaving the children’s area aside, where should the visitor go next? As the Siddons material is wartime, maybe it is logical to go to the war photographs displayed along the right-hand wall. Some at least of these come from the Pearman lecture slides. A few years ago I gave a talk presenting the slides at the Museum. They include some interesting images not present in the Imperial War Museum photo collection. Here is a picture of damage to the railway, and another (apologies for the reflected ceiling lights showing in the photos).

The central showcase contains a mixture of material, including the Museum’s most unusual Lawrence-related object, a lock of his hair cut off when he was a small child and later given away by his mother.

A peninsular showcase at the far end of the gallery contains books by Lawrence and facsimiles of some letters to a distant cousin (mis-described in captions as his aunt).

This error is one of only two I noticed (though I did not read all the exhibit captions). The other was a statement on the panel about Lawrence as a writer that claimed that The Mint was his first attempt at writing after the war. True, Lawrence wrote the Uxbridge notes on which Parts I and II of The Mint are based in the autumn of 1922, four years before he issued the subscribers’ abridgement of Seven Pillars - but before he went to Uxbridge he had completed the polished 1922 version of Seven Pillars, which many regard as his greatest literary work.

A final item is the wooden bier that carried Lawrence’s coffin from the church to the graveyard.

I hope the description and photographs above will give a fair impression of the exhibition. Summing up is not so easy.

The exhibition is not addressed to people who already know a lot about Lawrence. Its main audience will be the museum’s general visitors, many of whom know almost nothing about the subject. For this audience, I think it probably does a good job. If you have paid £6 to visit the Dorset County Museum (well worth visiting in its own right) the Lawrence exhibition, which has no additional entry charge, should be an attractive bonus. You could spend an enjoyable half hour or so viewing the exhibits and their captions, and might learn quite a lot.

That said, the range of exhibits does not represent all Lawrence’s significant activities. I don’t recall seeing any exhibits, for example, that reflected his lifelong interest in fine printing, or his work on the revision and production of the subscribers’ Seven Pillars - even though much of his work on the latter took place at Clouds Hill nearby.

A visitor more knowledgeable about Lawrence’s biography might find the exhibition a little thin. Lack of resource - and possibly the cost of insurance - left gaps that could easily have been filled. There is certainly space to spare. Moreover, the exhibition does not fulfil the promise implied by its title. The myth is hardly touched upon, except briefly in a wall panel as the ‘birth of a legend’.

My recommendation would be to look at the exhibition if you are in Dorchester and intend to visit the Museum anyway. However, it is probably not worth travelling any distance specially to see it.

There is, incidentally, a range of Lawrence-related articles in the museum’s shop.

Jeremy Wilson

On 22 October 2007 Jeremy Wilson unveiled a blue plaque at Myrtle Cottage, Hythe, Southampton, where Lawrence rented rooms while working at the British Power Boat Co. on high-speed motor launches for the RAF. He was introduced by Councillor Malcolm Wade, Chairman of the Hythe and Dibden Parish Council. In a brief address, Jeremy Wilson said:

‘T. E. Lawrence first came to this area as a child. In the spring of 1894 his parents moved from Brittany to a house called Langley Lodge, demolished some years ago.

‘The family stayed for three summers before moving to Oxford in the early autumn of 1897. By all accounts it was an extremely happy period for the four young brothers (a fifth was born in 1900). Their father enjoyed outdoor pursuits and encouraged his sons to do likewise. A treat for the boys was to go to Lepe and watch yachts sailing in the Solent. It is quite likely that the young Lawrence sailed on Southampton Water. He later wrote: ‘my father had yachts and used to take me with him from my fourth year.’

‘At Langley Lodge, the boys received private lessons from a governess. Their formal schooling began in Oxford, where Ned, the second son, went on to win an exhibition to Jesus College and First Class Honours in Modern History.

‘Although he occasionally passed through the port of Southampton on his travels, it was not until the autumn of 1929 that Lawrence again spent significant time in this area. By then he was serving as an aircraftman in the R.A.F., and assisting his Commanding Officer with arrangements for the Schneider Trophy contest.

‘During the event itself they lived on board a private motor yacht, the Karen. One of the yacht’s tenders was an American Biscayne Baby speedboat. The boat’s engine tended to give trouble but Lawrence, who was mechanically minded, took an interest and managed to keep it running well. Afterwards the Karen’s millionaire owner gave the speedboat to Lawrence and his CO as a memento of their visit. They took it back to R.A.F. Mount Batten in Plymouth, the seaplane base where they were stationed.

‘Through owning this speedboat, both Lawrence and his CO became interested in replacing the slow conventional boats used as seaplane tenders with something faster. In February 1931 Lawrence watched as an R.A.F. flying boat crashed while landing a few hundred yards offshore. He rushed to the duty boat but by the time they reached the scene several of the aircraft’s crew had drowned. He later gave evidence at the Inquest, and helped his CO campaign within the RAF for faster boats. The immediate result was his posting to Hythe, where Hubert Scott-Paine had begun building hard chine planing hulls at the British Power Boat Company.

‘During 1931-2 Lawrence was based here overseeing the construction and trials of new 321/2ft Seaplane Tenders for the R.A.F. He rented a room at Myrtle Cottage. His landlady Mrs Harriett Biddlecombe later recalled that he stayed for about ten months in 1931-2, and later returned for a shorter period. Certainly, Lawrence continued visiting the British Power Boat Co, which went on to build more 321/2ft launches, as well as tenders and larger armoured target-boats for the Air Force. When his service ended in 1935, plans for a larger version were already well advanced.

‘Myrtle cottage is, so far as I know, the only building associated with Lawrence that survives in Hythe (or indeed in Southampton. At a later stage, when he needed to visit both Hythe and White’s Shipyard in East Cowes, he had lodgings there in Birmingham Street, but the house has since been pulled down). The other relic is, of course, RAF 206, one of the first batch of 321/2 ft launches. It has been restored and still runs.

‘Lawrence found the hours he spent at sea testing boats physically exhausting. Nevertheless, he believed the work was important - as indeed it turned out to be. During the Second World War the boats he helped develop here in the 1930s saved thousands of lives on Air-Sea Rescue missions.

‘Throughout his life Lawrence was both practical and strongly creative. He was completely committed to his work here at Hythe, and proud of what he helped achieve. It is surely fitting to mark his time here with a blue plaque.

In February 1935 Lawrence wrote:

‘I have been so curiously fortunate as to share in a little revolution we have made in boat design. People have thought we were at finality there, for since 1850 ships have merely got bigger. When I went into R.A.F. boats in 1929, every type was an Admiralty design. All were round-bottomed, derived from the first hollow tree, with only a fin, called a keel, to delay their rolling about and over. They progressed by pushing their own bulk of water aside. Now (1935) not one type of R.A.F. boat in production is naval… We have found, chosen, selected or derived our own sorts: they have (power for power) three times the speed of their predecessors, less weight, less cost, more room, more safety, more seaworthiness. As their speed increases, they rise out of the water and run over its face. They cannot roll, nor pitch, having no pendulum nor period, but a subtly modelled planning bottom and sharp edges.

‘Now I do not claim to have made these boats. They have grown out of joint experience, skill and imaginations of many men. But I can (secretly) feel that they owe to me their opportunity and their acceptance. The pundits met them with a fierce hostility: all the R.A.F. sailors, and all the Navy, said that they would break, sink, wear out, be unmanageable. To-day we are advising the War Office in refitting the coast defences entirely with boats of our model, and the Admiralty has specified them for the modernised battleships: while the Germans, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese Governments have adopted them! In inventing them we have had to make new engines, new auxiliaries, use new timbers, new metals, new materials. It has been five years of intense and co-ordinated progress. Nothing now hinders the application of our design to big ships - except the conservatism of man, of course. Patience. It cannot be stopped now.’

The owners of Myrtle Cottage provided generous hospitality, much enjoyed by all.

This blog replaces the former T. E. Lawrence Studies ‘News’ page. The initial entries have been transferred from the earlier page.