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 his family

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Military Intelligence Office
Cairo

20.2.15

 
The Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia or The Moallakat: translated by Lady Anne Blunt, and put into English verse by Wilfred Scawen Blunt: published at the Chiswick Press 5/- in 1904 probably. Can you get me this book? I expect it is out of print:- but if so Blackwell would get a copy very easily, as it is a well known book. If you get it, please send it out to Intelligence Department, W.O. as above. No news this week; we sit still, and maintain an appearance of miserly inactivity.  The hotel cost 10/- a day, which is not dear for Cairo... and all of us and all General Maxwell's staff are living here so as to be available by telephone at any time: we have our private wire to the hotel. We have all to stay here and that is why they pay us £400 a year... or a little less, as it seems to work out. I heard from Will, who is consumed with a wild patriotism. I am afraid that I don't feel strongly enough. So far as Syria is concerned it is France and not Turkey that is the enemy... but I wish I could give it to Germany in some way, for the shameless way in which she dragged Turkey into the war. I don't think any nation has ever done in high policies anything quite so [word illegible]. I have written to Mrs. Rieder. Campbell Thompson has gone to the Persian Gulf.

It is no use my sending you news: only I don't think things are going well: it seems to me that attention is fixed on the Belgian front that our interests in the East are being sacrificed. It will go against us very heavily some day.

Could you see if Stanford, (Long Acre) can sell you a map of North Syria, by Blankenhorn: it is about 20 years old, but very good: cost about - 10. - . If you can get a copy, please post it out to me, folded up.

Arnie did not ask me for any postcards I think... tell him to write again. I will be in Egypt some time yet.

N.

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