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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Lord Winterton
All Souls College
Oxford.
22. 4. 20
Dear Winterton,
I've hopped off here - more or less broke - for a month. They give one credit....
Yes I saw Trenchard last night. He has, as you say, 'grown' beyond measure. Pre-1914 he'd have been downed for a little Englander: now I think he is right in all points, and after quite a lot of talk I feel inclined to back his scheme. It means Salmond as H.C. in Bagdad (a happy deliverance from the I.C.S. tradition) with probably the Colonial Secretary nominally responsible, and with an Arab army under an Arab-British administration to defend the country.
Trenchard sounded to me clean and honest (for the Lord’s sake don't repeat this!) and means to play fair by the local people. He thinks as little of the worth of bombing as we did!
I told him Joyce would make the Arab army for him: it would be pleasant to see Nuri and Jaafar and the rest doing their job over again.
However more of this when we meet: but unless something provokes you beyond measure don't knock him on the head in the House, because I think he means rightly. So odd to find a man without entanglements in the city!
That talk will be great sport, and I'll look forward to it: but I doubt whether Aubrey will come so soon. Albania seems to be revolting in several ways at once, and he will probably assume its crown for a few weeks.
Yours ever,
T E L
This letter goes to the H. of C: a bad address, I think, but I always forget the other.
L.
Note: 'Aubrey' - Aubrey Herbert
| Source: | DG 302-3 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 24 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