Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to his mother
My new address is
338171 A C 2 SHAW
Room 2. E.R.S.
R.A.F. Dept
Drigh Road
Karachi
India
11.1.27
I've only just got here, and cannot yet say what I think of the place. It is comfortable, almost magnificently-built, and cool. I am in room two, with fourteen fellows. It seems a quiet place, though the stone floors and high ceilings are noisy and distant, hospital-like, after the homeliness of Cranwell. The journey out here was extraordinarily uncomfortable, owing to the crowded state of the boat. Smooth seas. We stopped at Port Said, (where Newcombe came on board for me, and took me to dinner with him) and at Basra, where I did not go ashore.
Before leaving England I got my Seven Pillars finished, and sent out the early copies to specially privileged subscribers. You will laugh at me to hear that the first went to the King: but he wanted one, and I amused myself by treating him well!
Arnie has your copy, to keep till you instruct him to the contrary. Its completion takes a load off my mind.
I'll be out here, probably, till 1932. If my book is judged a failure I'll be nearly forgotten in England by then.
N.
Your old clock is being sent to Clouds Hill.>
| Source: | HL 364 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 12 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