Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Bernard Shaw
14.1.24.
My Lord,
I couldn't write to you yesterday, though I tried to: and tonight's is only an apology for being still stupid.
Your letter of your efforts with the P.M... but really you should not. If I won't do that sort of thing for myself, other people should not do it for me. It's awfully good of you... but awfully bad for me. Please let up on it all. The army is more or less what I ought to have, and in time I'll get to feel at home in it. And please tell Mrs. Shaw that if ever I write anything new (I try hard not to) I'll send her a copy direct. This will save her wasting money on owls or Doughty's in the future.
A Yank firm (Bone & Liverpool, or something) have pirated my Arabia Deserta preface, and are cheerful that the book is selling well in the States. It's nice to feel good enough to be stolen. May Ramsay MacDonald soon succeed Baldwin....
Yours sincerely
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 451 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 1 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