T. E. Lawrence

Contents lists

1888-1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915-16

1917-18

1919-20

1921

1922

1923

1924

1925

1926

1927

1928

1929

1930

1931

1932

1933

1934

1935

Updated June 2012

T. E. Lawrence to D. G. Hogarth

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Grand Continental Hotel
Cairo

2.2.1915

A long time since I wrote to you:- but office from 9a.m. till 10p.m. and all confidential work doesn't tend to letter writing: one has a pen in one's hand all day, and is sick of the thing by dark... We nearly wired for you the other day, to come and do civil governor of our conquests... but we decided it was too small a job to warrant it... How amused old Catoni would have been.

The P.E.F. are foolish in their generation, and so no doubt children of light. I hope Musil's knowledge among the Turks is more use than mine among the English. The Egyptian army officer is pathetically ignorant of across the border. Woolley sits all day doing précis, and writing windy concealers of truth for the press.... Newcombe runs a gang of most offensive spies, and talks to the General. I am map officer, and write geographical reports, trying to persuade 'em that Syria is not peopled entirely by Turks.... Aubrey Herbert unearths futile conspiracies.

The ten principals of the last conspiracy were sold by their underlings, and then came each one independently and secretly by night to the General, and gave away his fellows. It was so hard to keep them from meeting on the doorstep... and when the plot matured it was like the man who was Friday. None the less the Egyptian townsmen do hate us so. I thought it was only a coldness... but it is a most burning dislike. They are also very much afraid.

L.

T. E. Lawrence chronology

1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales

1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys

1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset