Lawrence of Arabia, as adviser to Prince Feisal, led camel-riding Bedouin in a guerrilla war against Turkey from Arabia to Damascus. The great British hero of World War I, he helped Winston Churchill draw the map of the modern Middle East, creating Jordan and making Feisal king of Iraq. Then, in 1922, he shed the rank of colonel and his name to serve as a private in the Royal Air Force until shortly before his death in 1935 at age 46. Lawrence has been characterized as a man with extraordinary powers and as an imposter who manufactured his own legend. This careful study, based on virtually all published and unpublished English-language sources, sides neither with Lawrence's eulogists nor with his denigrators. Presenting a fair, balanced picture of his life, it shows the lifelong continuity of his puzzling conduct: the often needless deviousness that troubled even close friends; the self-hatred and savage masochism that cursed his adult years.

Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, and the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule of 1916-18. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia. Throughout his life, Lawrence was a prolific writer. A large portion of his output was epistolary; he often sent several letters a day. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an account of his war experiences. In 1919 he had been elected to a seven-year research fellowship at Oxford, providing him with support while he worked on the book. In addition to being a memoir of his experiences during the war, certain parts also serve as essays on military strategy, Arabian culture and geography, and other topics. Lawrence re-wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom three times; once "blind" after he lost the manuscript while changing trains at Reading railway station. The Mint is a memoir of his experiences as an enlisted man in the Royal Air Force (RAF). It concerns the period following the First World War when Lawrence decided to disappear from public view. He enlisted in RAF under an assumed name, becoming 352087 Aircraftman Ross. The book is a closely observed autobiographical account of his experiences. He worked from a notebook that he kept while enlisted, writing of the daily lives of enlisted men and his desire to be a part of something larger than himself: the Royal Air Force. The book's title likens the RAF training to a coin factory, with the men as 'The Raw Material' and life in the training camp as being 'In the Mill' that stamps the coins out of the blank metal.

The Collected Works of T.E. Lawrence, known famously as Lawrence of Arabia, offers readers a comprehensive insight into the life and writings of this esteemed figure. The collection includes Lawrence's renowned autobiography 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom,' providing a firsthand account of his experiences in the Arabian Peninsula during World War I, as well as other essays, letters, and poems showcasing his literary prowess. Lawrence's poetic and evocative style transports readers to the vast deserts of the Middle East, intertwining personal reflections with historical events. His contributions to English literature and history are evident throughout the collection, making it a valuable resource for scholars and enthusiasts alike. T.E. Lawrence's unique perspective and captivating storytelling ensure that his works remain influential and relevant to this day.

In T. E. Lawrence: Tormented Hero, Andrew Norman sheds new light on Lawrence of Arabia, who remains a mystery to this day. Lawrence s sexual orientation is discussed in detail, including his dislike of physical relationships, and it is suggested that he suffered from sexual aversion disorder. Evidence that he was beaten on several occasions, at his own request, comes from several sources and appears to be irrefutable. New light is shed on his fatal motorcycle crash in May 1935, and evidence is presented showing that it occurred in a different location and manner to that which is generally supposed. Photographs taken at the time are compared with the present day topography of the site to support this entirely new theory. Other aspects of his life which are discussed, include his relationship with his parents, notably his problematical relationship with his mother Sarah; his role in the Arab Revolt and subsequent disillusionment; his friendship with some of the literati of the day including E. M. Forster, George Bernard Shaw, and Robert Graves; his love for and veneration of Thomas Hardy; how Shaw s wife Charlotte, became his confidante; and how he took Lady Astor pillion riding on his motorcycle.

If you plan to portray a national icon in less than heroic terms, you had better be prepared for a fight, as Richard Aldington learned even before the publication of his 1955 biography, Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry. Fred D. Crawford provides the first examination of all major parties and points of view embroiled in the controversy generated by Aldington's biography of T. E. Lawrence. In two years of research, Aldington made major discoveries, including the extent to which Lawrence had cooperated with Lowell Thomas, Robert Graves, and B. H. Liddell Hart in the creation of the "Lawrence legend". For this and other reasons, Aldington concluded that Lawrence was a charlatan, a poseur, and a fraud. Upon learning of Aldington's antagonism to Lawrence a year before Aldington's book appeared, a powerful group including B. H. Liddell Hart, Robert Graves, A. W. Lawrence, and other Lawrence partisans worked behind the scenes to suppress and denigrate Aldington's biography. These attempts, Crawford notes, reveal a great deal about how private interests can determine what the public is allowed to read.

A wealth of new research and thinking on Lawrence, the Arab Revolt, and World War One in the Middle East, providing essential background to today's violent conflicts Rarely is a book published that revises our understanding of an entire world region and the history that has defined it. This groundbreaking volume makes just such a contribution. Neil Faulkner draws on ten years of field research to offer the first truly multidisciplinary history of the conflicts that raged in Sinai, Arabia, Palestine, and Syria during the First World War. In Lawrence of Arabia's War, the author rewrites the history of T. E. Lawrence's legendary military campaigns in the context of the Arab Revolt. He explores the intersections among the declining Ottoman Empire, the Bedouin tribes, nascent Arab nationalism, and Western imperial ambition. The book provides a new analysis of Ottoman resilience in the face of modern industrialized warfare, and it assesses the relative weight of conventional operations in Palestine and irregular warfare in Syria. Faulkner thus reassesses the historic roots of today's divided, fractious, war-torn Middle East.

From the early 1920s to the late 1960s, T. E. Lawrence's life and career were largely the subject of sensationalist speculation, fired mainly by the romantic image of “Lawrence of Arabia.” Then, as the result of various political, scholarly, and intellectual developments, study of Lawrence's career and influence began to take on a new aspect. This collection of fourteen essays, including Stephen E. Tabachnick's extensive introduction, provides balanced and fully documented analyses of Lawrence's multifaceted career by an international group of scholars. The T. E. Lawrence Puzzle will appeal to Lawrence experts and to general readers interested in objective, reasoned perspectives on a brilliant polymath with a fascinating personality, whose many achievements remain very relevant to our own times.

This book focuses on how we perceive, know and interpret culture across disciplinary boundaries. The study combines theoretical and critical contexts for close readings in culture through discussions of literature, philosophy, history, psychology and visual arts by and about men and women in Europe, the Americas and beyond.

Lawrence of Arabia is widely considered one of the ten greatest films ever made - though more often by film-goers and film-makers than by critics. This monograph argues that popular wisdom is correct, and that Lean's film is a unique blend of visionary image-making, narrative power, mythopoetic charm and psychological acuteness.