Lawrence's Gravesite Threatened

Big news from England: Lawrence's gravesite in Moreton is under threat from quarry development. Fortunately, action by local Dorset citizens and the T.E. Lawrence Society has delayed a decision until October 23rd. Unfortunately, it's still likely that development will continue.

Any interested parties can read more about the issue here and here, or sign a petition against further development.

Lawrence discoveries and publishings

It's been almost seven months since our last post. Time to check in.

Three recent items might interest Lawrence enthusiasts:.

We'll start with a noteworthy archaeological find: the discovery of a wartime camp, used by Lawrence and his allies, at Tooth Hill in Jordan by the Great Arab Revolt Project, in conjunction with Bristol University. The Daily Mail has a detailed article along with photographs.

Secondly, Dr. Ali A. Allawi's (former Defense Minister of Iraq) biography of Emir Faisal has recently been published in America. So far as I'm aware, this marks the first English-language biography of Lawrence's friend and ally, and is worth seeking out for that reason alone. The Wall Street Journal has a detailed review here.

Finally, there's fiction news from this blog's friend, novelist/historian Benedicta Froelich. She recently published her novel Nella Sua Quiete (In His Quiet), detailing Lawrence's final days at Clouds Hill. Currently, it's only in Italian, but she promises an English-language edition in the future.

As for us? Expect a special article by week's end, and at least one book review in the foreseeable future. Happy reading!

Upcoming Lawrence Biography

May sees the release of a new volume on TEL: Lawrence: Warrior and Scholar by Bruce Leigh.

This book is a slim (120 pp.) volume published by Tattered Flag, an independent publisher of military history. Its Amazon blurb makes some rather bold claims, to wit:

"Nobody has gone in search of the mind of the man himself - of his formation and his deep beliefs. Nobody has asked the question, What, really, is the source of the extraordinary power of this little man?"

I leave it to my readers to judge the truthfulness of this comment. Suffice it to say this sensationalist, preening ad copy gets more tiresome with each new book. Still, let's wish Mr. Leigh the best of luck - and hope his book is a worthy addition to the Lawrence canon.

Richard Aldington Rides Again: Nick Pope on Lawrence, Aldington and "Legends"

This piece by Nick Pope appeared in Monday's edition of The Majalla, a magazine focusing on the Arab World. Given the magazine's focus it's not surprising Lawrence comes under fire: Arab writers like Edward Said and Suleiman Mousa have long criticized Lawrence, alongside more liberal-minded Westerners. What is strange is that it posits Richard Aldington's 1955 Biographical Enquiry as "unravel[ing] the hype and fabrication behind the Lawrence story."

Mr. Pope admits he's "no scholar" in Lawrence studies, yet evinces familiarity with Seven Pillars and other biographies. That said, his read on both Lawrence and Aldington proves annoyingly superficial. This piece reads like the breathless reviews that invariably accompany new Lawrence biographies, boldly intoning again how this book "cuts the Lawrence legend down to size" or "reduces its subject to human scale." 

First, it's wrong to characterize Aldington as "a mere footnote... in the Lawrence legend industry." Anyone vaguely familiar with Lawrence studies knows Aldington's profound impact on public and scholarly discourse. His revelations of Lawrence's illegitimacy and connivance with early biographers, alongside critical analyses of Lawrence's writings and more spurious accusations of homosexuality, pathological lying and egomania, forced future biographers to reassess Lawrence. Certainly they remain prevalent in public consciousness; the film Lawrence of Arabia notably incorporates much of Aldington's characterization. For better or worse, Aldington continues to color the Lawrence debate. 

Pope's criticisms of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, drawing on Aldington's book, aren't very convincing either. Note his disparagement of Lawrence claiming Aqaba's capture as "another Gallipoli" (not a direct quote) when "it had been done [by the British] twice before." Yes, by small Royal Navy hit-and-run raids too small to actually hold the town. Anyway, Lawrence's comment occurs when his superiors Murray and Wingate proposed an Anglo-French landing at Aqaba. Having visited the region, Lawrence feared that a massed landing of troops would be

as unfavorably placed as on a Gallipoli beach, would be under observation and gun-fire from the coastal hills: and these granite hills, thousands of feet high, were impracticable for heavy troops: the passes through them being formidable defiles, very costly to assault or to cover. (p. 173, 2001 Penguin Classics edition of SP)

True, the Turks maintained only a small regional garrison at Aqaba, small enough for Royal Marines to periodically come ashore and capture them. But then the Turks had few troops guarding the Dardanelles in early 1915, either. The landing of an entire army would produce a major reaction, with terrain giving the Turks a decided advantage. Hardly a baseless boast by Lawrence but a shrewd tactical assessment.

It's true that Allenby's British regulars did the lion's share of the fighting in Palestine, with the Arab Revolt a "sideshow." Does Lawrence claim otherwise? He consciously admitted to writing a subjective account of his personal experiences serving with the Arabs. Nor was Lawrence's oft-stated distrust of French imperial designs - harped on incessantly by Aldington - remotely unique among British policymakers of that era, as David Fromkin and James Barr have shown.

But then Aldington's whole book harps on minor points. When Lawrence dismissively refers to Bulgaria's surrender as "insignificant to us" (SP 649) during a raid, Aldington thinks it "a degree of more than usual egotism" (240) to downplay such a momentous event. To Lawrence's Bedouin campaigning in the desert though, the news probably didn't matter. Deflating the claim that Lawrence read 50,000 books at Oxford (31-32) is amusing but pointless: surely this was playful exaggeration rather than a psychotic lie. If Robert Graves reported it uncritically the fault doesn't lie with Lawrence.

This sarcastic pedantry characterizes Aldington's entire work, finding fault with Lawrence even where there's none to be had. Aldington may have started with "no particular feelings towards Lawrence" but his writings drip with contempt towards the British establishment that lionized T.E. Certainly he loathes that Lawrence won fame instead of "the real heroes of 1914-1918" (381) - Western Front veterans like himself. Not for nothing did Robert Irwin compare Aldington's book to "a waterfall of venom." 

My main complaint though comes in positioning Aldington as the Rosetta Stone to Lawrence. Pope mentions John Mack and Michael Korda's books but dismisses them as hero worship, marking the authors as dupes or worse. All the revelations of the post-Aldington era - the release of War Office documents in 1969, witnesses like John Bruce and Janet Laurie, Jeremy Wilson's authorized biography and publishing of Lawrence's private papers - go unmentioned. By ignoring this, Pope strangely undercuts Aldington's importance.

Finally, there's the implied dichotomy between Lawrence worship and Lawrence hatred. Granted, Aldington was savaged in his time by the "Lawrence Bureau," with A.W. Lawrence and Basil Liddell Hart (whose book I'll soon review) trying to suppress and smear his work. And authorized biographer Jeremy Wilson can be viciously defensive towards Lawrence. That doesn't mean a nuanced view of Lawrence isn't possible. Some people can square Lawrence's disreputable side with his achievements and still find him admirable. Lawrence wasn't a mythic construct, but a human being - more interesting than either Aldington or Liddell Hart would have us believe.

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.

Stewart F. Newcome Blog

Source

During my web travels I encountered Kerry Webber's blog In the Shadow of the Crescent, a tribute page to Lawrence's friend and colleague Colonel Stewart F. Newcombe. It's an interesting site, with lots of pictures and detailed info about Newcombe and the Arab Revolt. It also appears that Mr. Webber is soon publishing his research in book form. Highly recommended.

For those who aren't aware, the film Lawrence of Arabia is receiving a 50th anniversary re-release in October. I will definitely be posting about it on my film blog. If any such pieces prove historically-minded (as opposed to film analysis etc.) I'll cross-post them here.

I'm feeling a bit burned out on Lawrence right now and I will probably go on hiatus from this blog soon. I hope to knock off Victoria Ocampo's 338171 T.E. beforehand, but Clare Sydney Smith may have to wait. Priorities.

Groggy Returns

I'm back from a seven-month hiatus with a new crop of Lawrence bios. Time permitting (my job doesn't allow for the time required for a good, well-thought-out analysis) I will have reviews of two more Lawrence bios up soon: Vyvyan Richards' Portrait of T.E. Lawrence and Lawrence James' The Golden Warrior: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia. These will be the first two books not covered in Images of Lawrence, the book which inspired this blog in the first place, so I hope I can do them justice.

In the meantime, there are at least two new Lawrence biographies just released: James Schneider's Guerilla Leader: T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt, which appears to be an analysis of Lawrene's military leadership, and Joseph Berton's T.E. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt: An Illustrated Guide. Also Jeremy Wilson appears to be preparing a new edition of his authorized biography.

One of the benefits of being a Lawrence enthusiast is there's never a shortage of reading material. Keep an eye on this blog for more updates.

Update and Self-Promotion

Due to a busy class and work schedule, I haven't made much progress on the Stewart, Robinson or Armitage biographies. I still hope to have a review of whichever I finish first up soon, as well as a review of Korda's Hero.

On the plus side, I was recently hired by the online website Suite101, and my first published article is basically a compressed-into-1,000-words version of this blog.

I'm back!

Apologies for the three-month hiatus; I've been busy with school (I'm graduating at the end of this month) and areas of other interest.

I just finished Michael Korda's Hero and will have reviews of that and Anthony Nutting's The Man and the Motive up soon. I also ordered a bunch of rather obscure Lawrence books, including those by Desmond Stewart, Edward Robinson and Florence Armitage, so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I just came across this excellent blog by Maarten Schild, an historian and Lawrence scholar. I recommend you check it out while I sort through the new material.

Welcome!

Welcome, one and all, to my latest project: the T.E. Lawrence Biographical Review!

What prompted the creation of this blog? A week or so ago, Amazon.com sent me an e-mail of recommended readings. While this is often a nuisance, I was quite surprised to find that one of the recommendations was a new biography of T.E. Lawrence by the acclaimed historian Michael Korda. My first reaction was delight, but a second one was: another Lawrence biography? Just how many are there?

Well, it turns out that there are hundreds, in a wide variety of languages, from Lowell Thomas's With Lawrence in Arabia (1924) to Korda's Hero, with many diverse and interesting examples in between. Before starting this blog, I've already read thirteen or so books on Lawrence, including:

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

Barr, James. Setting the Desert on Fire: T.E. Lawrence and Britain’s Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009.

Brown, Malcolm. Lawrence of Arabia: The Life, the Legend. London: Thames and Hudson, 2005.

Florence, Ronald. Lawrence and Aaronsohn: T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. New York: Penguin, 2008.

Gonzalez-Gerth, Miguel. T.E. Lawrence, Richard Aldington and the Death of Heroes. Austin: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 1994.

Lawrence, Arnold W. (ed.) T.E. Lawrence by His Friends: A New Selection of Memoirs. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963.

Lawrence, T.E. Revolt in the Desert. New York: Black Dog and Leventhall, 2005.

Lawrence, T.E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph. New York: Penguin, 2000.

MacLean, Alistair. Lawrence of Arabia. New York: Random House, 1962.

Mousa, Suleiman. T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Thomas, Lowell. With Lawrence in Arabia. New York: The Century, 1924.

Wilson, Jeremy. Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography. London: William Heinemann, 1989.

Which, amazingly enough, is barely a drop in the bucket. Even this fairly small number provides a wide variety of interpretations and of Lawrence and his character. The absolute of ambiguity, controversy and surrounding Lawrence seventy-five years after his death is mind-boggling. Besides my personal interest, there's something of a practical one.

Though Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's official biographer, is engaging in an invaluable project of bringing primary Lawrence sources to the 'Net, I haven't seen a comparable project regarding works about Lawrence by other people. With so many Lawrence biographies, with such a wide variety of interpretations and analysis of his character, motivations and importance, it seemed a good idea to separate the wheat from the chaf for the Lawrence-interested. I am nothing like the expert Mr. Wilson is, to be sure, but I imagine I have a lot more free time.

Like many people, I first became aware of T.E. Lawrence through David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which I still consider my favorite film ever. Watching that extraordinary film convinced me to look into the man behind the film, and what an experience it has been. The first Lawrence book I read was a juvenile work by novelist Alistair MacLean; soon I graduated into more substantial fare, like Lowell Thomas's bio and Lawrence's own Revolt in the Desert. It was Seven Pillars of Wisdom, however, that fully captured my attention. Whatever its trustworthiness as an historical account, it's a masterpiece of memoir and self-analysis, by an appealingly tortured and neurotic - yet unquestionably heroic - man. Five years after my first introduction to Seven Pillars, I'm still diving headlong into Lawrence books.

T.E. Lawrence is a figure who never goes out of style. He appeals to different people for different reasons. He's certainly a man of historical importance: his guerilla tactics have influenced everyone from Mao Tse-Tung to Vo Nguyen Giap to the Iraqi insurgency, and his involvement with the Colonial Office helped draw the current boundaries of the Middle East. Then there's his character: his psychology, character, beliefs, sexuality and truthfulness have been scrutinized by biographers of various shades, yet he remains elusive, impossible to pin down, and biographies are more likely to reflect their author's environment and sensibilities than Lawrence's (as this blog no doubt will). Aside from Thomas Jefferson, I don't think there's an historical personage half so shrouded in mystery and subjective interpretation. He's a figure of continuing fascination, ambiguity and importance, and no doubt he'll be the subject of biographies for centuries to come.

The purpose of this blog, then, is simple. I will read and review as many Lawrence biographies as I can, providing brief analysis and commentary on them. I will read the books as they become available to me, and not in any real order: you'll forgive the disjuncture, I hope, in starting with an Aldington or Mousa review rather than Lowell Thomas and Robert Graves. I probably won't review Lawrence's own works as they fall outside the blog's main purview.

This blog will be updated depending on how busy I am, and how often I read a Lawrence-related work (I do have other interests). As I have already reviewed Aldington's work, and have recently read two others, we should at least have a decent place to start.

Well, there's no time to waste then, is there?