Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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Lawrence claimed that he ran away from home around 1905 and served for a few weeks as a boy soldier with the Royal Garrison Artillery at St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, from which he was bought out. [18] However, no evidence of this appears in army records. [19] [20] Travels, antiquities, and archaeology [ edit ] Leonard Woolley ( left) and Lawrence in their excavation house at Carchemish, c. 1912 Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On (1968) includes a satire on Lawrence; known as "Tee Hee Lawrence" because of his high-pitched, girlish giggle. "Clad in the magnificent white silk robes of an Arab prince ... he hoped to pass unnoticed through London. Alas he was mistaken." [273]

Graves, Robert (1928). Lawrence and the Arabian Adventure. New York: Doubleday – via Internet Archive (archive.org). The T. E. Lawrence Poems was published by Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen in 1982. The poems rely on, and quote directly from, primary material including Seven Pillars and the collected letters. [270] The strange thing is that Lawrence apparently disliked many aspects of service as an enlisted man. He made no real effort to fit in - on one occasion when an officer berated him, Lawrence smarted off by answering in Arabic - and did not hide his true identity. Lawrence bought a series of high-end motorcycles which no airman could have afforded on his service pay (and died when he crashed the last of these). He found time for publishing and translation projects throughout his time in the RAF, and continued to socialize with political and literary celebrities such as Winston Churchill, Robert Graves, and even Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hardy.Beauforte-Greenwood, W. E. G. "Notes on the introduction to the RAF of high-speed craft". T. E. Lawrence Studies. Archived from the original on 27 May 2011 . Retrieved 11 April 2011. Matt Wells, media correspondent (22 August 2002). "The 100 greatest Britons: lots of pop, not so much circumstance | Media". The Guardian . Retrieved 20 April 2020.

Lawrence's biographers have discussed his sexuality at considerable length and this discussion has spilled into the popular press. [210] There is no direct evidence for consensual sexual intimacy between Lawrence and any person. His friends have expressed the opinion that he was asexual, [211] [212] and Lawrence himself specifically denied any personal experience of sex in multiple private letters. [213] There were suggestions that Lawrence had been intimate with his companion Selim Ahmed, "Dahoum", who worked with him at a pre-war archaeological dig in Carchemish, [214] and fellow serviceman R. A. M. Guy, [215] but his biographers and contemporaries found them unconvincing. [214] [215] [216] Lawrence in Miranshah 1928 Simpson, Andrew R. B. (2011). Another Life: Lawrence After Arabia. History Press. pp.244–252. ISBN 978-0752466446.

Max von Oppenheim (1860–1946), German-Jewish lawyer, diplomat and archaeologist. Lawrence called his travelogue "the best book on the [Middle East] area I know".