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 H.S. Ede

---

Cattewater
Plymouth.

20.3.29

Dear Ede

Here we are. Cattewater proves to be about 100 airmen, pressed tightly on a rock, half awash in the Sound: a peninsular really, like a fossil lizard swimming from Mount Batten Golf Links across the harbour towards Plymouth Town. The sea is 30 yards from our hut, one way, and 70 yards the other. The Camp Officers are peaceful, it seems, and the airmen reasonably happy. That is good hearing, for me, as I have to share their good fortune.

About your Gaudier book. It's really very good. Gaudier is quite clear, and so is she. They both come, very intensely, through what you have written. That means you have done it well, in the large sense. In the smaller sense, syntax and the power of paragraphing, you have not done so surely. I could pick holes in any page; but the little things can be learnt, and are learnt, by going on writing: whereas the big thing, which is right in this case, comes right by instinct. So you are fortunate, and will probably write another book, after this one, and it'll be better than this. Do not leave Garnett to correct anything you can achieve yourself, by taking pains. Your own work is better, the more thoroughly you do it, for nobody else will really care as much as for this book as you do. That's the way, always.

Yours

T.E.S.

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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