06/02/2010 by jmw.

Those who have seen Rory Stewart’s recent BBC TV documentary  The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia might appreciate the passages below, taken from a private letter from Lawrence to a journalist written in 1927:

“The Arabs have their chance now - for what they are worth - of proving themselves capable of self-control, and Irak is nearly our first ‘brown’ dominion.”

“I could (and did) retire with some self-contentment, with the whole job done. I wanted the Arabs to have leave to make their own mess: and not to go on holding their hands to save them from messes. People learn by falling down, like babies.”

The letter was published in the National Review, 10 September 1963

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06/02/2010 by jmw.

Current World Archaeology/Great Arab Revolt Project

one-day conference
Lawrence, the Arabs, and the genesis of modern guerrilla warfare

Saturday 15 May 2010
Clore Management Centre
Birkbeck University of London
Bloomsbury

On the 75th anniversary of T.E. Lawrence’s death, three leading academic specialists assess his role in the desert war of 1916-1918 and his relevance in understanding the conflicts of the last 90 years. Neil Faulkner and Nick Saunders are joint directors of a pioneering new field project that is investigating the archaeological remains of the conflict along the line of the former Hijaz Railway. Jeremy Wilson, author of Lawrence of Arabia: the authorised biography of T E Lawrence, is widely recognised as the world’s leading authority on his subject. Together, on the basis of radically new evidence and interpretation, they offer a day of illustrated talks and discussion that will reassess Lawrence, his role, and his legacy. And they will draw some stark lessons: about the parallels between the failure of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 and unfolding disaster of the ‘war on terror‘ today.

Download the timetable and prospectus (PDF)

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17/01/2009 by jmw.

If I have restored to the East some self-respect, a goal, ideals: if I have made the standard of rule of white over red more exigent,  [then] I have fitted those peoples in a degree for the new commonwealth in which the dominant races will forget their brute achievements, and white and red and yellow and brown and black will stand up together without side-glances in the service of the world.

T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, The Complete 1922 Text, Chapter 1

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14/11/2008 by jmw.

The third season of excavations in the Great Arab Revolt Project
is now taking place. You can follow progress in its blog

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11/07/2008 by jmw.

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

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10/06/2008 by jmw.

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

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06/06/2008 by jmw.

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)

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30/05/2008 by jmw.

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

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27/05/2008 by jmw.

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

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26/05/2008 by jmw.

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

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