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 Eric Kennington

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Clouds Hill
Moreton
Dorset

10.02.24

Dear K.,

I'm unable to improve the libel chances. It stands this way. The book is libellous, as against Some Englishmen, Some Frenchmen, Some Arabs, Some Turks. The danger of proceedings run in this national order.

I'll do my best to prevent them

(i) by toning down.

(ii) by informing my victims, before proofs are passed, of what I say about them.

but I don't guarantee the efficacy of either proceeding.

Consequently the wise man must prepare for trouble. As I explained, the trouble can't hit me. A soldier is too poor a being to pay damages, too degraded a being to fear imprisonment.

I intended to tear of the printer's name, and lay claim, if challenged in the first six months (after that there is no real risk) to have printed it myself. I've asked law-men, (not professionally, but in friendly guise) and they tell me that in the circs. no action could well be taken against my printer. He must take my wages, and is not himself, but an extension of me. Pike will make the form of the book a credit to our firm. . . and if there are no libel actions (odds 90 to one there won't be) then he shall have All the credit of te appearance. If there is trouble I get it.

Meynell wouldn't ever come in. He could say simply that Pike had hired of him a press.

Many thanks for the Roberts photos. I think it's a good piece of work: though at first glance it puzzled me.

Some Nashes attached for judgement. Please tell me what you think of them. One is of 'A wilderness of sandstone peaks'.

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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