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 G. J. Greenwood

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Plymouth

17.VII.31

Dear Greenwood

I think Hanley a very good, if not always gay, writer. Boy is very remarkable, in the draft I read. I have not seen your revised text. He is profuse, various, and vigorous.

I hope you are not riding for a row with the Home Office. That sort of thing usually gives the author a kink against decency, and makes him bought by all the wrong people, for all the nasty reasons. Hanley is too good to be labelled by them. Of the evils, I far prefer censorship by the publisher to censorship by the police. If you publish anything a fellow writes, you only give the police an easy entry. So do outrage your love of liberty so far as to keep Hanley out of the Courts.

Of the two sentences you quote, nothing (on the score of fairness) can be said against the first.

The second is not so fair. I told him that nobody but a sane and decent person could write so freely about - well, filth. As you put it, people in search of a sane and wholesome book for their sons and daughters might blindly buy Boy - and be indignant. Can't you even it out? [4 lines omitted]

Good luck to you!

Yours

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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