Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to his family
General Staff -
Intelligence Section
General Headquarters
The Force in Egypt
Cairo
18.1.16
Only a line again this week: I am most busy writing a sort of newspaper article on weak points of the Baghdad railway. Not much news. The reconstruction has gone over our heads, and passed off leaving us in the same place exactly. I do not know if it is all finished yet or not. Anyhow apparently I am to stay out here for the present. I don't think there is much chance of my getting off for a time... we are supposed to have an afternoon off a month, but in practice we never get if oftener than once in 3 months. The rest of the week we are on 9 till 1.30. 2.15 till 8.30: 10 till 12: the rest of the time one spends looking about, and running out to the Hotel for meals. The work is very interesting: mostly writing notes on railways, and troop-movements, and the nature of the country everywhere, and the climate, and the number of horses or camels or sheep or fleas in it... and then drawing maps showing all these things.
N.
Please congratulate Bob on getting all his compulsory exams. over: I expect he will now go in for quantities of voluntary ones, just to prevent himself feeling queer!
N.
| Source: | HL 312 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 1 January 2006 |
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