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 Ernest Thurtle

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14,Barton Street
Westminster
London, S.W.1.

28/2/29

Dear Mr Thurtle,

It is nice of you to suggest our meeting again: but my time is very short. There is only Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday left. Those are duty days, and you'll be in Westminster: so it would presumably be Soho, and not your plutocratic home! However probably you are tied up for all the time. I am free each night.

The getting back to camp feels to me the most desirable thing. I am longing to be in harness: and hope that you will not be able to abolish the three Services before 1935.

'Persecution' was a word I used in jest. Really, I could see that you were asking your questions to find out the truth: and I was glad of the chance of showing you the truth about me, so far as I could. You'll have seen that those books were not meant to throw dust in their readers' eyes: and it pleases me very much to have had you see them: Yet it would not please me to have everybody see them. My affairs don't seem worth that general interest.

Au revoir, some time: if it isn't on one of these next three evenings!

Yours sincerely,

T E Shaw

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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