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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Nancy Astor
Cattewater,
Plymouth
22/7/29.
Dear Lady Astor,
I do not know when, or with whom, I have ever maintained for so long so hot a correspondence. Clearly we are soul-mates.
Incidentally an American dealer pays £20 for interesting letters from me: so heaven knows the prices which infatuate collectors will give for yours. Are we worth it? I mean, aren't we rather wasting our sweetnesses on the already sweet?
I enclose the telegram, as it came to me. I had been in London, on R.A.F. business, and found it waiting my return. I said 'Goddes, who is it?' for necessity causes me to write about 50 letters a week, and some of them might have brought down terrible people to Cattewater. However, no one came. Peace.
Auf wiedersehen (Dirty dogs, they have stopped off poor Trotsky: penalties of success!)
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 665-666 |
| Checked: | dn/ |
| Last revised: | 8 March 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