Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Clare Sydney Smith
14, Barton Street,
Westminster,
London, S.W. I.
3rd August, 1931.
Delightful little notepaper, this of Baker's. It is saving me hours of time, for to-day I am writing ten letters to answer what I got last week.
I searched all the French Gramophone Company's lists last week, at Imhof's and Van Wyk's, for a Spiel Zigeuner disc from the Contessa Maritza. No trace: and the selection is only Marek Weber, worthless. Was it a German record, do you think, or can you find out what Company made it?
Otherwise I have hardly been out; it is all Odyssey and I am sicker than ever of that great work. It does not go as well as I had hoped, and probably I shall only just get it through by the end of August.
I am sorry to hear of the further change of plan. It is time somebody learnt his own mind. What will they settle in the end, I wonder? I value certainty, for myself, first of all gifts. Everything is bearable if you know it is fixed.
T.E.S.
No ink in house!
| Source: | GR 155 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 2 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