T.E. Lawrence

As a boy I had a friend who lived above a grocer cum milk bar in a harbour side suburb. His parents were Christian Palestinians who had fled from Haifa just after the war of 1948.  Playing with my friend one day in his flat above the shop he opened an old tin chest and showed me an Arab headdress (a white cloth kuffiya with gold agals)  just like that worn by T.E. Lawrence. This was very exciting for us and we paraded wearing it around the room. Later the father told us that not only did he wear a headdress like Lawrence but he had actually met him in Palestine during the First World War. This aging weary grocer struggling with a new life in a strange land was instantly illuminated in our eyes by his association with the fabled Lawrence of Arabia.

Unless your soul is dead you will find Lawrence attractive especially his war time leadership in the Arab Revolt of irregular Bedouin fighters. There is the other side which also attracts differently. It is his withdrawal from the glamour and fame and the sequestering himself monk-like among the ranks in the British Army and then the Royal Air Force.  This was no peevish affectation but something he had to do: it was a necessary reclusion following the degradation of his sexual assault at Deraa (which I believe true) and a nervous breakdown after completing his magum opus and his despair of the fate of the Arabs following Versailles.   As someone said of  Lawrence that in the ranks he was like a 'unicorn in a racing stable'.

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is  a masterly book but  not that readable owing to its somewhat dated style and its dry reportage --- perhaps I am wrong here. Anyhow it is wonderful book to have on the shelves and dip into now and again; and you know that the fantastic life of Lawrence leading his Bedouins is a presence in your bookcase.   The Mint, an account of his austere life in the ranks of the RAF is also a very fine work. Here T.E.L. has stripped away any theatrical effects and the man stands before you; a man whose excellence would stand out in any occupation. Beside reading umpteen biographies of Lawrence the book I like most is his collected letters edited by David Garnett. In these epistles is the superior man, the enigma, the charismatic great soul, the stranger, the self-tormentor, and the perfect blend of  aesthete, intellectual, book-man and warrior.

Lawrence in ranks - what intelligence!