Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Edward Marsh
24.2.21
I don't know that you read prose, except on official subjects: this is unofficial. They are objective extracts* from a MSS story I wrote of Feisal's campaign.
I was short of cash, and wrote these for an American magazine, which was willing to blow £1000 on the speculation.
Now I'm going to get my £1000 by the sweat of my brain: so these retire into the darkness again.
They may make you laugh: and after all it's not like a telephone call. You needn't unhook them: they can be minuted back to me saying 'have seen' or 'good': or 'most amusing': or 'I really think you ought to publish them'.
These are only suggestions.
I don't ever want to see them again: but they would be difficult to destroy: so perhaps you might return them next year or so.
T.E.L.
*35,000 words: 10% of the whole.
| Source: | DG 328 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 26 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