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 C. M. Doughty

---

All Souls,
Oxford.

7.5.20.

Dear Mr. Doughty,

After a great deal of writing Egypt have at last been able to make up their minds - of course wrongly. They say that the arrears due to the interference of the local troubles will take them two years to work off. After that they will be able to take on outside work again.

I do not believe it, for I am sure that their local troubles are not nearly over. It is most unsatisfactory.

There remain possibilities of America, and subscription. The younger poets are very anxious for the latter, since they all want Arabia Deserta, and cannot afford her (she now stands at £32.10.0) but it would mean getting a very long list (at least a thousand copies, I think) and I do not know if this is possible.
As for America, the book is unfortunately not copyright there. However, if I may, I'll have another talk with Duckworth. There is so large and worthy a demand for the book that it seems shameful not to get it out again somehow.

Then about a tame artist. That also has been difficult. John had to finish a lot of things for a show, to raise himself money: then he went to hospital, for an operation, and now he's in France being made fit again.

He is of course the great man: but meanwhile, would you allow Mr. W. Rothenstein to draw you? He sounds German, but did very well in the war: and makes a special point of men of books. He knows Arabia Deserta, of course, and would very much like to make a drawing of you. It would take him about an hour and a half, and would not trouble you at all, and it would be a very pleasing and honest piece of work. Rothenstein is a quite safe draughtsman - not a genius, good and bad, like John. If you will allow him, it would give all of us a great deal of pleasure.

I'm sorry about Cairo: but it only means finding another way: a nuisance.

Yours sincerely

T. E. Lawrence

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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