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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Clare Sydney Smith
Friday, noon. [December 1930]
I am just off to Cliveden via London. I also hate going off at the moment. Week-ends in big houses are miseries. You will find Leo looking fat and happy. Squeak ditto, I hope: though I have not been able to feed Squeak at all.
The gramophone has had a top overhaul and is louder. The trembling of the tone has gone. The motor is stiff; and to run it in Workshops first thing in the morning it had to have the valve-switch turned on for 15 to 20 minutes, to warm everything through. It may want a touch of the hand to start it turning, too. In your house 10 minutes warm-up would probably be enough. Workshops is colder. S/Lr. Jones had the Rachmaninoff Concerto, and the Mozart viola quintet.
If I get back at a decent hour on Sunday I shall come in: thank you!
T.E.S.
| Source: | GR 108 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 1 July 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