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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Robert Bridges
Clouds Hill
Moreton
10.XII.24
Dear Dr. Bridges,
Your letter was a great pleasure: and I'll call in hopes of finding you, when next I'm in the Oxford direction.
The motor-cycle is a glorious one: but I indulge it only when the weather is not misty, and the roads not wet. Consequently it is no good my giving notice of intended approach. Also even in fine weather my advanced age sometimes feels too advanced for a hard ride.
Sassoon's invention of your clavichord was genius: and everybody worth reading in England rejoiced to join him in giving it you. You had given them so much for so long that they felt their debts irksome: that is why they shrank from talking of them regularly.
I hope either Sassoon or Hogarth warned you that I'm in the army again: otherwise my khaki will seem disagreeable to you. Sunday, of course, is my free day.
Yours sincerely,
T. E. Shaw
| Source: | DG 471 |
| Checked: | mv/ |
| Last revised: | 11 February 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