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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Ernest Thurtle
Cattewater
Plymouth
26.6.29.
Dear Thurtle,
(Yet it doesn't sound right: M.P.'s are Misters surely, being our Masters).
I did not write after the election: there are so many M.Ps. that one can't write to all. I'd hoped too for some crumbs of office to come the way of the more vigorous Labour people: and am disappointed. Ramsay seems to be infected also by the safety play of his enemies. The country is prepared (longing, in fact) for someone to take just a tiny risk, for once.
Now the session has started, and I hope it will be educative. Unless the change of Government means a change of policy we'd better wash the Commons out and concentrate on the Civil Service.
I am hoping especially that you will let Trotsky into England: that you will make peace at once with Russia and the States: and that you will abolish the death penalty for cowardice in war. I have run too far and too fast (but never fast enough to please me at the time) under fire, to throw a stone at the fearfullest creature. You see, if I did, I might hit myself in the eye!
Cattewater is a good station, and we are happy-ish.
Remember me, some day if you see them, to Maxton and Malone. After the Schneider Cup race, after September, I hope to get leave and will then try to look you up.
Do you know Montague, the U.S. of S. for Air? Sassoon was very good and painstaking. I hope M. will shape well, in his place.
Yours
T.E. Shaw
| Source: | DG 660-661 | |
| Checked: | dn/ | |
| Last revised: | 31 January 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