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. A. Knowles

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R.A.F. Mount Batten
Plymouth

10/2/30

It is very good of you to keep the place warmed occasionally. More books go to you almost at once. You'll find some of the packets have quite decent things amongst them - though generally they are what the troops call my 'binders'.

I wish I had the cottage near this camp. For the last four days we have endured an agony of cold.

Is Pat still there? My regards, if within reach. Poor E.M. Forster has lost nine of his trees (he has a plot of ground, too, in Surrey) and is miserable about it. I gloated back at him that all my old wrecks still stood firm. But is it firm? This N. wind will try
them bitterly.

There are lots more books likely to follow. Let me know when the shelving gets full: and then try and find me a chippy to run shelves like the present, but in oak, the full depth and height of the chimney-breast, on each side. That will hold 500 books. Years yet.

Chingford, my other patch of ground, is not yet sold. So I am temporarily financially embarrassed. Good for me. I stay in camp and translate Greek, instead of gadding about the earth.

Yours

T.E.S.

Pull Bill's leg for me, please.

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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