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 A. E. Chambers

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Saturday 10 March [1923]

Dear Jock

You will have thought me slow in sending you this: but I am contented only to have remembered it. I go to seldom to Chingford, where my books lie idle: and when I go have many things to look after.

I hope you will like it: had it not been meant to improve the American Navy it would have been a better book: but at least that is an honourable fault, and the particular aim was achieved. I would willingly have done something in this manner upon the R.A.F. - a much finer show than the States' Navy of 1820:- but that's another of the undone things.

The book is part of a set, so I hope you'll be able to return it eventually: (J.H. Ross, Pole Hill, Chingford, Essex): for it's my ambition some day to live there and read again.

Yours ever

R.

Above address will always find me - at long last: and don't hesitate to write if you think I can ever be of use to you. Probably I go abroad in October.

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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