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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Clare Sydney Smith
14, Barton Street.
12/VIII/31.
Odyssey creeps slowly over the ground, like a snake with glanders. I wonder if it will ever finish? Anyway, I shall not do a thing else that distracts me till it does finish. My working hours have reached seventeen a day! Unless you wire me to the contrary I shall leave here on Monday next (17th) and reach Mount Batten that evening: to stay for the two or three days you suggest and then ride back again. The C/O need not wire nor make any change in casualty forms; he can merely give me a new pass when this Lambe Cup (what for, in the name of Heaven?) is syllabussed.
No Biscuit till there is no Homer - I'm afraid. My Bank is quite firm about cheques now.
I should laugh if the Schneider fizzled yet!
T.E.S.
| Source: | GR 157 |
| 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