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 W. M. M. Hurley

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Cattewater
Plymouth

1.4.29.

[24 lines omitted] Cattewater is a quietly decent station: rather new, but it feels promising. I've become unluckily by clicking Fire Picquet over the Easter holiday - There isn't anyone in the R.A.F. who does as much holiday duty as I do. That is the firm conviction of at least half the airmen enlisted!

It is quaint your being at Amman. Difficult flying: the hardest, I think, there is. That Jordan valley is a terror in Summer and the Palestine 'dromes are not too good.

Peake is a very good fellow. He has stuck splendidly to three or four thankless jobs, and made a deal out of them. A hot, impatient, soul, too.

I enclose you some sample pages of Joyce's latest (not yet ready for publication in book form) and remarks by A.E. Joyce and his poetry. This is the colony of dispossessed English and American and Irish writers living rather intensely in one another's cheap lodgings in Paris and writing desperately hard. I fancy, for myself, that they are rather out of touch with reality; by reality I mean shops like Selfridges, and motor busses, and the Daily Express. At least there is a hot-house flavour about their work, which makes me wonder if it's a wholesome day-to-day good. Remarkable, certainly, but a bit funny. However people who do not practise writing aren't really qualified to judge of it.

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