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 H. R. Hadley

---

All Souls College,
Oxford.

25.9.20

Dear Hadley,

Here's this - it isn't much of a thing, but the best I can lay my hands on. I think Goslett took it, outside his tent at Akaba one day when I hadn't got my cloak on.

About Mecca. I send you three photographs of it, taken by an Arab doctor. It is a curious place, without trees or running water, a very hot town, in narrow valleys between limestone hills. About 120000 people. It's not really so difficult to go there, if they know you, because the people are not fanatical. They keep Christians out because the other Moslems of the world (India and elsewhere) would be annoyed if we were allowed in: and if they were annoyed they might stop coming on pilgrimage, and the pilgrim traffic is all the revenue of the place. So if anyone asks me if I've been there I have to say 'no' in public: but in private you can guess about it! It mustn't get into the papers, because it would do the old King's reputation harm.

We'll get that dinner some day: but I'll have to make some money first. Perhaps I'll write a book and make it that way. At present I'm completely on the rocks, and as I like my leisure very much I don't want to have to go and do a job of work again! The Govt. wanted me to go back East!

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