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 This careful study, based on virtually all published and unpublished English-language sources, sides neither with Lawrence's eulogists nor with his denigrators.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.

An intimate biography of the years that turned T. E. Lawrence into Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia's heroism during the Arab revolt and his disgust at the subsequent betrayal of the Arabs in the postwar negotiations have become the stuff of legend. But T. E. Lawrence’s adventures in the Levant began long before the outbreak of war. This intimate biography is the first to focus on Lawrence in his twenties, the untold story of the awkward archaeologist from Oxford who, on first visiting "The East," fell in love with Arab culture and found his life's mission. Few people realize that Lawrence’s classic autobiography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, was not the first book to carry that iconic title. Lawrence himself burned his original draft. Anthony Sattin here uncovers the story Lawrence wanted to conceal: the truth of his birth, his tortuous relationship with a dominant mother, his deep affection for an Arab boy, and the personal reasons that drove him from student to spy. Drawing on surviving letters, diaries, and accounts from close confidantes, Sattin brings a biographer’s eye for detail and a travel writer's verve to Lawrence's extraordinary journeys through the region with which his name is forever connected. In a masterful parallel narrative, The Young T. E. Lawrence charts the maturation of the man and the incipient countries he treasured, both coming of age at a time when the world’s foundations were coming undone.

"It is quiet here now, and I feel as though I were fixed in my cottage for good. It is as I thought ... something is finished with my leaving the RAF. ... It gets worse instead of healing over ... At present the feeling is mere bewilderment. I imagine leaves must feel like this after they have fallen from their tree and until they die." The Last Days of T.E. Lawrence is a chronicle of the time from when Lawrence of Arabia left the RAF up to his fateful motorcycle accident on 13 May 1935. Much of the story is told in Lawrence's own words, from diaries and letters. It covers his time at Clouds Hill, the picturesque cottage in Dorset, where Lawrence intended to retire. Influenced by Lawrence's last and unpublished writing project, "Leaves in the Wind," A Leaf in the Wind reveals his state of mind as he prepared to leave the RAF. Travelling on his Brough Superior motorcycle along a narrow Dorset lane, Lawrence collided with two pushbikes. An official witness told of Lawrence travelling fast, and swerving to avoid a black car coming in the opposite direction. This book painstakingly fits together all the evidence to determine the truth of the motorcycle crash that led to the death of Lawrence of Arabia. For the first time a detailed record is set down covering the last six days before the accident. Meticulously researched by Paul Marriott and Yvonne Argent, their painstaking investigations reveal many new insights into Lawrence's life, activities and interests.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arabic-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire saw a crucial change in attitudes towards sexuality. Notions of 'respectability', 'propriety' and 'sexual morality' were being transformed in literary and cultural discourses, a shift that was related to the gradual rise in anti-Ottoman Arab nationalism. However, contemporary Orientalists such as Sir Richard Burton and T.E. Lawrence were oblivious to certain aspects of this process of cultural reconfiguration. While accounts of male-love poetry (ghazal al-mudhakkar) were being gradually expurgated from the Arab literary heritage, elaborate narratives of Oriental homoerotic desire distinctively characterise the encounters of both Burton and Lawrence with the Arab East. By comparing their literary and autobiographical accounts of the Arab Orient with contemporary Arabic literature, Feras Alkabani is able to expose this critical disparity in cross-cultural portrayals of sexual morality and homoerotic desire. Alkabani relates the conflicting agendas of contemporary Orientalists and Arab scholars to the shifts in international imperial power relations and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire. His detailed comparative study reveals the significance of homoerotic desire within Orientalist and Arab literary discourses at a time when the meaning and connotations of poetic male-love were undergoing a critical change in Arab culture and literature. It will prove invaluable for those researching Orientalism, nationalism, imperialism and manifestations of homoerotic desire in the fin-de-siècle Middle East.

Greed and intrigue combine explosively in this gripping tale of how the mercurial Lawrence of Arabia changed the Middle East forever. It was T. E. Lawrence’s classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom that made the Arab Revolt a legend and helped turn the British intelligence officer into the mythical “Lawrence of Arabia.” But the intrigue behind the revolt and its startling consequences for the present-day Middle East have remained a mystery for nearly one hundred years. James Barr spent four years trawling declassified archives in Europe and crossing the hostile deserts of the Middle East to re-create the revolt as the international drama it really was. A colorful cast of Arab sheiks, British and French soldiers, spies, and diplomats come together in this gripping narrative of political maneuvering, guerrilla warfare, and imperial greed. Setting the Desert on Fire is a masterly account of a key moment in the history of the Middle East, and a portrait of Lawrence himself that is bright, nuanced, and full of fresh insights into the true nature of the master mythmaker.

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. Table of Contents: Seven Pillars of Wisdom The Mint The Evolution of a Revolt Translations: The Odyssey The Forest Giant Letters (1915-1935)

Since the end of the First World War, the legend of 'Lawrence of Arabia' has enjoyed much currency in the popular imagination of the West. Behind this legend, however, is a man, Thomas Edward Lawrence, tortured and brilliant, a man whose life and literature reflect the modern consciousness and the war that indelibly marked it. Here in this volume are essays which seek to address what has been overlooked by the legend and to better understand the legacy of his presence in the twentieth century. Contributors explore Lawrence's relation to other major writers of his time, the colonial and postcolonial implications of his link with Arabia, his sexuality, and his status as cultural icon.

Includes World War One In The Desert Illustration Pack- 115 photos/illustrations and 19 maps spanning the Desert campaigns 1914-1918. This monograph analyzes T.E. Lawrence as a military theorist and campaign planner. It investigates whether Lawrence’s development of his own theory of war assisted him in planning the Arab campaign during World War I. The monograph focuses in four areas. The first section discusses the historical background of Lawrence and the Arab revolt. This section establishes the basis for Lawrence’s understanding of war and of the theater of operations. In addition, it identifies the aims of the Arab revolt and why Arab actions were important to the Allied cause. The second section focuses on Lawrence’s theory of war. This section explains his theory and how he developed it. The third section deals with how Lawrence’s theory addressed the Arab’s ends (desired end state for the war), means (use of the resources available), and ways (the method for employing the means to attain the ends). In a fourth and concluding section. The monograph proposes that T. E. Lawrence’s development of a theory of war did assist him in planning the Arab campaign during World War I. Lawrence’s theory of war accomplished two functions. First. it clarified the past, what had happened in the Arab revolt to that point. Secondly, it helped Lawrence anticipate the future. A future that came to fruition because of Lawrence’s ability to transcend his role as a theorist. Using his theory as a basis, Lawrence carried his rational approach to war into the development of an operational concept, the "war of detachment" and a fighting doctrine to fulfill it. With these means in hand, Lawrence devised a way to employ them. Logically, the way Lawrence devised was a campaign plan designed in accordance with his theory.