New Maarten Schild post

Maarten Schild has a fascinating new article on the debate over Lawrence's sexuality at his blog here. Very much worth a read.

The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (1990, Lawrence James)

Publishing Info:

James, Lawrence. The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia. New York: Skyhorse, 2008. Original publication 1990. 523 pp.

Introduction:

By the late '80s the Lawrence debate became relatively balanced. Rather than the hysterical black-and-white arguments of the post-Aldington era, shades of gray crept into the debate as new sources and original research appeared. A more interesting Lawrence emerged, even as authors continued to project themselves onto him.

The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia attempts a straight academic biography. Lawrence James provides relatively little original research or fresh insight, and his analysis occasionally grates. Nonetheless, he deserves credit for an intriguingly complex portrait of Lawrence.

The Author:


Lawrence James (born 1943) is an acclaimed British historian and journalist. Besides the present book, he has written extensively on British history, including the excellent The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1994), Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (1997), Warrior Race: A History of the British at War (2001), and biographies of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Edmund Allenby. His most recent work is Aristocrats: Britain's Great Ruling Class from 1066 to the Present (2010).

The Review:

Despite his cynicism towards the "Lawrence legend," James scrupulously rebukes many outlandish critical claims. Addressing Knightley and Simpson's accusation of pre-war espionage, James argues Lawrence the archaeologist "would have found out nothing... not already well-known to the British government" (45). He also dismisses conspiracy theorizing about Lawrence's death as "thriller fantasy" (495). Between this and his healthy skepticism towards Lawrence's own writings, James establishes himself as a credible biographer.

The most interesting sections involve the development of the Lawrence legend. James has a deep background in British history, and he does a great job placing Lawrence's fame in context. In the grim aftermath of World War I, James shows how much the English-speaking world needed a hero like Lawrence, who mixed traditional romanticism with modern "common man" appeal. He also excellently captures Lawrence's complicity in starting the legend, and mixed feelings of its perpetuation. James ends the book with an overview of Lawrence's portrayal in biography and popular media, growing and mutating to meet cultural needs and the whims of his biographers.

Like other authors, James views Lawrence through his perceived fantasies. Chafing at a strict but not unhappy childhood, the young Lawrence tested his physical limits, traveled abroad and plunged himself into foreign cultures. Enraptured by Morte d'Arthur and The Odyssey, Lawrence viewed his life as a saga, casting himself as its oversized hero. This medievalism also informs Lawrence's love of the simple Bedouin and aversion towards the educated "town Arabs." John Mack and Desmond Stewart advanced ideas of this argument on a personal level, but James explores it in the broader context of Edwardian England.

When James gets to the war years, his analysis grows mixed. He convincingly argues that Lawrence's views on the Middle East - especially his skepticism towards France and hatred of Turkey - evolved in concert with his Arab Bureau colleagues, belying the idea that Lawrence was a committed imperialist from the start. He disparages the Arab Revolt, conceding its propaganda value but trotting out the old canard of gold-hungry tribesmen. He argues the Arabs achieved little militarily, a questionable assessment in light of recent books like James Barr's Setting the Desert on Fire. Despite these critiques, James gladly acknowledges Lawrence's skill and courage in the desert.

James adds little new or insightful in dealing with Lawrence's strange post-war career. He dutifully recounts Lawrence's work in the Colonial Office, his attempts to serve as a "gentleman ranker," his bizarre relationship with John Bruce and brushing shoulders with the likes of Bernard Shaw and Robert Graves while dining with gruff RAF flyers. Lawrence's post-war career is fascinating, but James doesn't bring much to the table here.

James casts a skeptical eye on Seven Pillars of Wisdom, pointedly highlighting Lawrence's exaggerations. Interestingly, James notes Lawrence's embellishment extended to his official reports, rendering many contemporary documents suspect. However, James' textual analysis is also spotty. He views Lawrence's descriptions of the Deraa incident and Turkish atrocities at Tafas as justification for later Arab massacres of the Turks. The bloodcurdling depiction of Tafas, and Lawrence's loudly-stated revulsion to bloodshed, seem to bely James's argument. James is wedded to the idea of Seven Pillars as a carefully-structured novel, interesting in specific cases but overstated in general.

James devotes a long chapter to Lawrence's capture and rape at Deraa (pp. 245-263). He raises the usual objections, from Lawrence's inconsistency in accounts to some eyewitness testimony to Hajim Bey's heterosexuality. His bombshell is a diary entry from a colleague at Aqaba, which supposedly proves Lawrence could not have been in Deraa at the time of incident. Jeremy Wilson, however, has shown this diary conflicts with other contemporary documents. James moves on from factual matters to speculation that Deraa serves as a "coded" admission of Lawrence's sexual preference.

James goes beyond the usual arguments by claiming that Lawrence was a practicing homosexual. He makes the most of Seven Pillars' description of Bedouin man-love, and John Bruce's tale of flogging is hard to discount. Beyond these old chestnuts, James is grasping at straws. He repeats Desmond Stewart's spurious "Bluebeard" story, liberally quotes the dubious Richard Meinertzhagen ("boy or girl?") and even suggests Lawrence was about to be arrested for indecency prior to his death. The fact that such rumors existed is suggestive, but does not constitute evidence.

The Golden Warrior remains a worthy biography all the same. If James criticizes Lawrence's vanity and self-aggrandizement, he also praises his genius, heroism, tactical skill and charisma. "Why Lawrence felt impelled to embellish his achievement and then repudiate the fame they offered him remains inexplicable," James notes (433), nicely summing up one of history's most enigmatic figures.

T.E. Lawrence (1977, Desmond Stewart)

Publishing Info:
Stewart, Desmond. T.E. Lawrence: A New Biography. London: Harper and Row, 1977. 352 pp.

Introduction:
Desmond Stewart was an expert journalist and Arab expert, and thus a seemingly ideal biographer for T.E. Lawrence. Instead, Stewart pens the worst major Lawrence biography, an indigestible mass of tabloid-style speculation and psychosexual fixation.

The Author:
Desmond Stewart (1924-1981) was a British journalist, novelist, and historian who specialized in the Middle East, focusing mostly on Egypt. He died under mysterious circumstances in 1981, supposedly being poisoned.

The Review:
Early chapters provide a respectable account of Lawrence's family life, time at Oxford and research at Carchemish. Attentive readers can spot warning signs, however. Stewart dismisses Janet Laurie's story of Lawrence's proposal as fanciful, ignoring John Mack's corroborating witnesses. He is similarly dismissive of Lawrence's pre-war service with the Royal Artillery. He dwells on Lawrence's relationships with Oxford classmate Vyvyan Richards and Arab servant Dahoum, along with his alleged ties to the Uranian movement of literary homosexuals. And the continued insinuations that Lawrence was "ignorant" of the Middle East (cf. 142, 291) grate.

When Stewart reaches the Arab Revolt, however, he goes completely off the rails. To call Stewart's assertions "controversial" misses the mark. It might be politely termed invention, crafting a highly questionable picture of Lawrence.

Stewart is hardly the first writer to question the veracity of Lawrence's "northern ride," his solitary reconnaissance into Syria during the Aqaba raid. Crucially, though, Richard Aldington and Suleiman Mousa did so without having official documentation released in 1969. Stewart does those gentlemen one better, dismissing the documentation and relying on the Arab sources employed by Mousa. But Stewart can't let well-enough alone: he says Lawrence "may have ridden off... in a search for news of Dahoum" (167). What's his evidence for this? Nothing. Not a footnote, source, or citation of any kind.

Many authors from Mousa on question Lawrence's claims of being captured and raped at Deraa. But Stewart isn't content with skepticism. Instead, he advances an unlikely theory that Lawrence allowed himself to be flogged by Sherif Ali ibn al-Harithi at Azrak, partially as self-punishment and partially for sexual release. He subsequently invented the story as a "metamorphosis [of] guilt and failure into a myth of degradation and torture" (188).

The best evidence he can summon: Lawrence was flogged by his mother as a child; Ali was physically attractive; a cryptic conversation with his aide, Rolls, months later, about Lawrence's supposed "imprisonment" (pp. 188-189). That's his entire basis for this extraordinary allegation. That, one suspects, and a healthy dose of imagination.

Later, Stewart claims Lawrence conspired with Nuri al-Said, Feisal's right-hand man and later Prime Minister of Iraq, to assassinate Syrian rival Abd el-Kader. Stewart's source is Subhi al-Umari, a pro-Kader police officer in a memoir written decades later. One wouldn't disqualify al-Umari's account on this basis, except Stewart seems content to dismiss Janet Laurie, the testimony of the boys involved in Lawrence's accident and others because of "the unreliability of memory" (30).

And why did Lawrence do this? Because "Abd el Kader had denounced Dahoum" (210) to the Turkish authorities. Again, he evades Seven Pillars, not so much critiquing Lawrence's account of Kader's treachery during the Yarmuk raid and later, as ignoring it. Nor does he present evidence supporting his version. Stewart's claim that "Lawrence never adequately explained his hatred of Abdel Kader" (209) is simply incorrect.

Stewart dissects Seven Pillars at length, viewing it as literature rather than memoir. He tries to portray Farraj and Daud, and Deraa, as symbolic of Lawrence's own relationships rather than things that actually happened, regardless of other historians' conclusions. Lawrence's execution of Ahmed is presented as implausible because "Lawrence was still bound by the King's regulations" while with the Arabs (245). He also questionably argues that the book's view of Arab nationalism and prose style were influenced by others, rather than being Lawrence's own thoughts/invention.

Stewart is convinced that Lawrence was a fascist, based on his relationship with Oswald Mosley acolyte Henry Williamson, Lawrence's own detailed descriptions of violence in Seven Pillars, his interest in rebels like Lenin and Roger Casement, admiration for the proletariat and supposed militarism. "The Fascist ethos would be more important to a man with Lawrence's blend of the radical and the authoritarian" (296). This, despite an earlier assertion that Lawrence was not an "ideologist" (209) and was motivated on a purely personal level.

Stewart's remaining credibility evaporates in the final chapters, when he posits Lawrence was murdered. Stewart dismisses the testimony of the two boys involved in the accident, claiming that "boys are bad witnesses" (302), insinuating further they were "under pressure from their fathers, minor cogs in the military machine" (303). Stewart obsesses over the "black car" reported by a single witness, and considers it suspicious that detectives were later sent to Lawrence's home and hospital bed. This theory was well-debunked by Knightley and Simpson eight years before and scarcely deserves a response.

Politely, Stewart is his own worst enemy. It is all well and good to critique Lawrence's cavalier attitude towards the truth, something even his admirers concede. But one undercuts their position by discarding documentary evidence for naked speculation. Certainly Stewart's bizarre Deraa story and entertainment of conspiracy theories about Lawrence's death strain credulity.

While skeptical towards Lawrence's writings, Stewart is happy to marshal dubious sources for his own case. He accepts Richard Meintertzhagen's suspect writings without critique, partly because of his "bluff, masculine personality" (225). His account of Lawrence's supposed sexual involvement with the crime boss "Bluebeard" originates from a German tabloid. Similarly, his willingness to credit Arab sources with a grudge against Lawrence and the Hashemites indicates a determination to arrange facts around a thesis.

Stewart uses this sleight-of-hand to craft a meretricious portrait of Lawrence: a habitual liar, a proto-Fascist, an active homosexual. All of these are defensible positions, advanced by other biographers. Again though, basing them around speculation and selective omission is, at best, self-confirmation. At worst, it's stretching the truth. For advancing bizarre, untenable theories without evidence, Desmond Stewart does himself and his subject a great disservice.

What Others Say:

"Completely unsupported assertions about T. E. make this one of the stupidest and most asinine books written about T. E. - or anyone else for that matter." - CooperToons

"Every critic knows that a crime style of sorts is responsible for a bad book... [Stewart's] crime style is as multiple as it is singular." - Nigel Dennis, New York Review of Books

"Stewart's singular contribution to this debate is to demonstrate that unverified and wild assertions will no longer go unchallenged, no matter how clever they are." - Stephen E. Tabachnick

"Worthless and untenable." - Jeremy Wilson

“If you accept Mr. Stewart’s thesis—and I do—then the core of virtually every Lawrence biography collapses like a desert sandcastle.” - Phillip Knightley

"Closely reasoned, level-headed and revealing." - Brian Vintcent, The Globe and Mail

A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1976, John E. Mack)

Publishing Info:

Mack, John E. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976. 561 pp.

Introduction:

A Prince of Our Disorder is, by a pretty wide margin, the best Lawrence biography I've read. Mixing impeccable research with insightful analysis, Mack creates the most complex and complete portrait of Lawrence to date. Unlike other writers who try and delve into Lawrence's psyche, Mack actually has the credentials to do so, and despite minor flaws Prince is extremely convincing.

The Author:



John Edward Mack (1929-2004) was a psychiatrist and Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School. Interested in how a person's worldview affects their actions and relationships with others, Mack wrote several books on dreams, nightmares and suicide before tackling Lawrence. Mack won a Pulitzer Prize for Prince, but is best-remembered today for his controversial works on alien abduction. He died in a car accident in 2004.

The Review:

In a nutshell, Mack's book has everything you'd want from a biography. It's more accessible than Jeremy Wilson's tome, more insightful (and credible) than Anthony Nutting and Desmond Stewart, and more balanced than most any other account.

Mack's greatest strength is his relative objectivity. Writing an objective account of Lawrence is a difficult proposition, and Mack probably comes as close to a balanced portrayal as possible. Perhaps because he advances from a psychological vantage point, Mack avoids the political and historical pre-occupations of other biographers, taking Lawrence on his own terms as man heroic and admirable, but also flawed and extremely tortured.

The genre of "psycho-biography" has become much-maligned, but Mack here shows its practical applications. Where a Richard Aldington might simply use Lawrence's writings and private correspondence to divine his personality, Mack engaged in exhaustive research to profile his subject: interviews with Lawrence's friends, family and acquaintances, primary source documents. Mack's hobby horse, viewing all of Lawrence's actions as personal rather than idealistic, has its drawbacks, namely in elliding the greater ramifications of Lawrence's life. On the other hand, though, it allows for a deep and insightful analysis of an ever-elusive individual.

Mack portrays Lawrence as, essentially, a boy who never went through a proper adolescence. In Mack's view, Lawrence's odd home life, with parents living out of wedlock (yet the mother fanatically religious), combined with Lawrence's love of history and literature to create a strangely stilted personality. Analyzing Lawrence's relationship with John Bruce, the Tanks Corps soldier Lawrence persuaded to flog him, Mack writes that Lawrence's personality was "vividly... split... between the adult and childhood aspects of himself, which... he never fully integrated" (439). This seems a spot-on analysis of a man who, until the end of his life, reveled in deliberate misdirection, playful exaggeration, silly practical jokes and a rather childish view of sex. And it might also account for his "craving to be famous; and a horror of being known to like being known."

Drawing on Lawrence's childhood preoccupations with romantic literature and the Crusades, Mack hypothesizes that Lawrence's Arab exploits were a real life extension of his "hero fantasies" (100), relishing the chance to play Richard the Lionheart or Sir Gallahad in real life. If one accepts Mack's argument that Lawrence never fully matured, this portrait seems extremely plausible. It certainly accounts for the epic style and florid language of Seven Pillars, his comparisons of Feisal and Auda abu Tayi to medieval knights, and his schizophrenic view of war as both good fun and utter horror.

Instead of focusing on Lawrence's need for "father figures" like Hogarth, Storrs and Allenby, Mack provides a more complex view of Lawrence's relationships. Whatever the difficulties with his parents, Lawrence had a warm and loving affection for his brothers, especially Arnold. Some of the most interesting sections involved Lawrence's very close relationship with Jimmy Newcombe, the son of Lawrence's wartime colleague Colonel Stewart Newcombe. The testimony of Lawrence's service mates in the Tank Corps and RAF show a great deal of affection for "Private Shaw." Through this analysis, Lawrence's relations with Arabs like Selim Ahmed and Emir Feisal can be viewed in a more complete light.

Mack spends a lot of time discussing Lawrence's sexual predilections. Mack mostly avoids the puerile "Was Lawrence gay?" debate that's raged since Aldington, seeing it as almost irrelevant. Instead, Mack views Lawrence as essentially incapable of physical love, both remarkably ignorant of and disgusted by "self-degradation." Deraa only exacerbated Lawrence's neuroses, channelling them into disturbing, self-destructive impulses. He also shows that, contrary to many biographies, Lawrence was not a misogynist - indeed, he had many female friends, including Charlotte Shaw, Gertrude Bell and Lady Astor. And Mack disputes the preoccupation with Seven Pillars's description of Bedouin homosexuality, arguing that his candor "must not be confused... with what Lawrence would or could tolerate in himself" (425).

Mack was the first to uncover the story of Janet Laurie. A childhood friend of Lawrence's, Laurie was shocked when a twenty-one year old Lawrence spontaneously proposed to her. Other writers have cast doubt on Laurie's veracity, especially since she didn't publicly come forward for decades. But Mack finds other witnesses - including Reverend E.H. Hall, an Oxford acquaintance of Lawrence's - to corroborate the story. If one accepts Laurie, it certainly complicates matters for the Aldington/Stewart/Lawrence James school who bluntly state Lawrence was gay.

Like many biographers, Mack places particular emphasis on Deraa. Mack concludes that "Lawrence underwent a painful, humiliating assault at Deraa... and the element of sexual pleasure he experienced... was particularly intolerable and shameful to him" (233). And yet Lawrence felt compelled to relive the experience, through John Bruce at least, "serv(ing) to gratify... the very desire for which Lawrence needed to be punished" (439). In Mack's eyes, Lawrence's inconsistent accounts of Deraa are an unwillingness to fully confront the incident, despite his need "to make... private suffering a matter of public record" (228).

By focusing on Lawrence's personality, the historical ramifications of Lawrence's actions get relatively short shrift. Mack recuses himself of analyzing Lawrence's military or political achievements - fair enough for a psychologist, but still a cop-out. At the very least, though, Mack convincingly argues that Lawrence was neither a cynical imperialist nor a naive Arab nationalist, rather doing his best to reconcile these oppositional viewpoints. Certainly he rebuts Knightley and Simpson's assumption that Lawrence was an intelligence agent before the war, claiming that "Lawrence hardly behaved like the model secret agent" (103). And, citing writer Anis Sayigh's work and the testimony of Bedouin who knew Lawrence during the war, he shows that Arabs hold (or held) Lawrence in more esteem than Suleiman Mousa suggests.

A Prince of Our Disorder will likely remain the definitive Lawrence biography for years to come. Mack's well-rounded portrait of Lawrence confirms his view of the man as "one of the most moving personal sagas" (459) ever, and stands as a really excellent book.

What Others Say:

"Clearly a book that tries to be objective and discusses the pros and cons of whether T. E. told the truth or not. John was a psychiastrist at Harvard Medical School and yet the book doesn't fall into trying to figure out history by psychoanalyzing the subject... This book deserved its Pulitzer Prize." - CooperToons

"A balanced answer to the Aldington-inspired line of criticism: it was the most serious and solid of all Lawrence biographies ever to appear up to the end of 1987." - Stephen E. Tabachnick

"I most admire John E. Mack's A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence (1976) for its thoroughness and sensitivity." - June Turner, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing

The following quotes from Mack's website:

“A hugely admired, and Pulitzer prize-winning, biography which concentrates on the relationship between Lawrence’s inner life and the actions and events which grew out of them. It is easy to warm to a biographer who, while drawing on his training as a psychiatrist, is never deceived into thinking that theory can ‘explain’ his Lawrence. The more Mack discovered about the social contexts of Lawrence’s actions and the demands on a public man, the more he understood Lawrence’s psychology. The result is a resounding confirmation of this approach to his subject.” — Desmond Christy, The Guardian

“Unlike many ‘psycho-biographies’, this was written by a trained psychologist who had also done his biographer’s homework: it remains the best biography of T.E. Lawrence.” — Contemporary Review

“Takes us closer to the core of Lawrence than any previous biography.” - Time

“A great book which honors its subject, its form, and its author.” - Boston Globe

Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry (Richard Aldington, 1955)

Publishing Info:

Aldington, Richard. Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry. Regnery: Chicago, 1955. 448 pp.

Introduction:

Revisionist history is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, generally accepted history is often sanitized, and going over historical figures and events in detail allows more ambiguous, complex and thorough interpretations. On the other hand, revisionism leaves the door open for men and women with their own motives for tearing down (or building up) an historical image, crafting history just as biased as what they're claiming to replace. Further, many readers assume that revisions of the "official" story are to be taken at face-value, that new works trumpeting "the true story" or "shocking revelations based on original research" are more truthful than common knowledge.

Richard Aldington was savagely attacked for going after T.E. Lawrence in 1955. No doubt some of the reaction was due to his assault on one of Britain's greatest heroes. However, I strongly suggest the vitriolic tone of his "Biographical Enquiry" is his main demerit. Instead of a rational debunking of the Lawrence legend, it's an angry screed that accepts sensationalism, bias and wild speculation as valid historiography. The result is a book that, while undeniably important, is ultimately of little practical merit.

The Author:

A veteran of World War I, Richard Aldington (1892-1962) was a distinguished poet and novelist before tackling Lawrence. An early founder of the Imagist movement, Aldington became famous for his acerbic, bitingly-satirical writing style, evidenced in his most famous novel, Death of a Hero (1929). Later in life, disenchanted with English society, he exiled himself to Paris, and then spent some time in the United States. Despite his distinguished WWI service, he was ostracized for spending World War II in the United States, and his attack on Lawrence gained him few friends and many detractors. He remained largely a pariah from British society before his death in July 1962.

The Review:

If Aldington's book remains relevant, it's in providing a corrective to the hagiographic portrayal of Lawrence that prevailed up to then. The hyperbolic adulation of Lowell Thomas is pretty hard to swallow, even if it makes a great story, and a counter-view was needed for discussion to advance beyond simple hero-worship.

Unfortunately, Aldington's book is a nasty piece of work, a vitriolic screed that goes out of its way to demonize Lawrence. His general viciousness and sensationalism undermines any valid points he has to make about Lawrence's character and truthfulness, and his work provides a crude playbook for a half-century of Lawrence detractors to repeat ad nauseum.

The most unattractive thing about the book is Aldington's tone. The text is dripping with sarcasm, acidic parenthetical commentary on Lawrence's every word and action. At times, Aldington comes up with modestly clever asides and bon mots, but at other times he just seems childishly hateful. One example: noting a discrepancy over dates in Lawrence's demobilization (p. 296), he remarks that "it illustrates so well Lawrence's modest confession 'that... he could recall any date.'" As this is, by Aldington's own account, a trivial detail, such an insulting comment is completely uncalled for. He repeatedly parrots lines that are less-than-flattering to Lawrence or his associates - for instance, he repeats Lloyd George's comment on denying "agnostic, atheistic France" a mandate in Syria three times. Aldington's condescension quickly grows tiresome, coming off as a playground bully picking on a popular kid. The sarcastic tone that serves him so well as a novelist undermines his credibility as an historian.

Another problem is Aldington's lack of scholarship. Aldington's method of research consists of comparing Lawrence's account with his biographers (specifically Robert Graves, Basil Liddel Hart, and Lowell Thomas), and accounts of others. There is some value in this, but the problem here is that Aldington always assumes that: a) Lawrence is the one fibbing, b) Lawrence's biographers cannot be blamed for the discrepancies (highly suspect in Thomas's case), and c) Lawrence is deliberately lying in all cases. That Lawrence may have somewhat embellished facts, or more mundanely misremembered them, is a valid point, but to go a step further and claim him a pathological liar is something else entirely. Aldington's disuse of primary documents - for instance, government reports - can be somewhat excused, but certainly hurts his case.

Aldington employs many strawman arguments. He says that Lawrence claimed his own responsibility for creating the idea of the Arab Revolt, and inventing the campaign against the Hejaz Railway. He also claims that Lawrence's subtitling of Seven Pillars as "a triumph" is vanity or egoism rather than irony over the ultimate failure of the Arab Movement. To be fair, Lawrence took undue credit for certain aspects of the campaign, particularly the raid on Aqaba, and Aldington is right to point this out. And he does a good job of deflating Robert Graves's claim that Lawrence read 50,000 books at Oxford, and discrepancies in his accounts of specific events between, say, personal correspondence and his memoirs. It's something else, however, to use this as proof that Lawrence deliberately lied about everything.

Aldington's motives are highly suspect. He had his own traumatic experiences in France during World War I, where he was wounded. Obviously this affected him a great deal, as evidenced by his body of work and troubled life. The overall tone seems to be of a man who fought in France, the decisive theater in the war, angry that someone from "the sideshow of a sideshow" got all the glory. Aldington even admits this, particularly in this revealing passage (p. 381):

"I have tried, but perhaps not always successfully, to give evidence... fairly and in such away that it can be instantly verified, though not without some indignation that such a man should have been given the fame and glory of the real heroes of 1914-1918" (emphasis added)

Ergo, Aldington's motives as suspect if not more so than what he claims of his subject. Apparently Lawrence's hardships in the desert, helping to unite disparate Arab tribes and providing a front that, at the very least, proved a useful "sideshow" to the British war effort, while under extremely harsh and trying conditions, is nothing compared to Aldington's own contribution, because Lawrence did not serve in France. To which I say, phooey. Even if we accept that Lawrence gilded the lily in Seven Pillars and elsewhere, Aldington's self-righteousness insults Lawrence and others who fought in peripheral theaters of WWI.

I might also suggest, if only parenthetically, that Aldington, already disenchanted with British society, wanted to bring the despised British Establishment down a peg by attacking one of their cherished heroes. The final line of the book, "Lawrence was the appropriate hero for his class and epoch" (p. 388), is highly suggestive of this.
 

Aldington creates the playbook for what Robert Bolt called the "facile Lawrence denigrators." Everything is here: emphasis on Lawrence's illegitimacy (Aldington was the first English writer to mention this, though Frenchman Leon Broussard first brought this to light in 1941), the downplaying of the Arab Revolt, the downplaying within that of Lawrence's own contribution, the treatment of Lawrence as pathological liar and egomaniac, etc. He also posits Lawrence as betraying the British cause by supporting the Arabs, a claim that exemplifies the tendency of Lawrence revisionists to view his political sympathies from extremes (as we'll see with Suleiman Mousa). Just about the only thing later skeptics would disparage is his acceptance of the Deraa Incident; it wasn't until Suleiman Mousa's T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View (1962) that a biographer strongly questioned Lawrence's account.
For any discussions of Lawrence's sexuality, I think it's key that Aldington is the first major biographer to strongly assert Lawrence as homosexual; this seems tacked on as a kick in the teeth, with absurd psychoanalysis culminating in the charge that Lawrence's evil mother warped his personality (!!!). Without expanding into a full-blown discussion here, I don't think it's a coincidence that allegations of Lawrence's homosexuality originated with Aldington, and have largely been parroted by Lawrence detractors since. The charge's general acceptance by even those sympathetic towards Lawrence shows the dangers of uncritically accepting "revisionism" as more valid than the "official" story.

All in all, Aldington's book is a bloody-minded hatchet job, saved only by virtue of being reasonably well-written. Any value it has as a corrective to what he calls "the Lawrence Bureau" is undermined by its overall smuttiness. This wouldn't be so much a problem if many people, unwilling to concede that old-fashioned heroes may have a grain of honor to their name, take Aldington and his successors at face value. There's room for debate in any area of history, but vitriol and dishonest scholarship is something to be discouraged.

What Others Say:

"If psychoanalysing someone is difficult by a licensed psychiatrist speaking with his subject, it's ridiculous for it to be attempted by a writer after his subject is dead and gone." - CooperToons

"Aldington's 'debunking' was made with such ill-conceived sarcasm and vitriol that he virtually demolished his own case." - Michael Asher

"Reading Aldington’s book is a bit like standing under a waterfall of venom." - Robert Irwin

"[Aldington provides] a sharper, deeper, cagier assessment... than... any of his predecessors." - Stephen E. Tabachnick

"[Aldington] had come to see Lawrence as the hero of a decadent society which he detested. He seems to have believed that if he could destroy Lawrence's reputation, this would in some way deeply wound the British establishment." - Jeremy Wilson