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 his mother

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338171 A/c Shaw
R.A.F. Cattewater
Plymouth

12.3.29

There, that is the address. I like the little camp. Only 100 of us live in it: the other 50 airmen are natives, and live in the town. The huts and sheds fill the whole of a little promontory (like a petrified lizard's bones) which runs out from a green hill into the Sound, facing Plymouth across about a mile of water.

The camp is comfortable, and the airmen say it is a happy place. So that is hopeful hearing: only everything is brand-new as yet, and nothing has yet settled in or down. The sunlight and the sea's nearness (50 yards on one side of our hut, 30 yards on the other) and the grass, make it lively. To get into Plymouth is a break-neck ride up and down twisting hill roads. Wherefore most people with bicycles ride out into the country, and take a ferry when they want to see the town. Nothing else, I fancy. I hope Bob got his little pamphlet: it was posted on Thursday, in London.

N.>

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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