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 Clare Sydney Smith

---

Monday, [August] 15th. [1930]
[second letter that day]

This will get you before you start, I hope. Leo is excellently well, and in very good appetite. A little squarish biscuit called 'custard creams' gives him a great deal of joy. So long as he gets occasional chocolates to breed variety. He runs all over the camp with me. Squeak is not quite so happy. When she came back from the Admiral's she was all right, but this morning there were all the signs of a cold, and she barked a little. So she stayed in bed. I think you will find her up to-morrow; but no school till Wednesday or Thursday perhaps. Mrs. (S/Ldr.) Jones informed.

Brown-Williams opened up your car batteries. They were hopelessly gone - both plates badly buckled, and quite beyond repair. I told him to throw them away. The question of new ones we can settle after you get back. I hope the old battery will see you through to-morrow. No news, whatever. The gramophone is in Workshops, being overhauled. They have not yet found its fault. It is wobbling badly in tone. I hope to have it running again by the time you get back.

T.E.S.
 

Note:
The Admiral - Admiral the Hon. Sir Hubert Brand. His daughter and Squeak were friends.
 

Back to top

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