Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Clare Sydney Smith
Hythe,
23.VI.32.
It goes on. Good that I wired cancelling that week-end; for the boat only got to Beachy Head and there swamped itself. We put into Newhaven and returned by road. Since, I have been running trials of the two target boats and over-timing, as usual. It must be a defect in my make-up which compels me to be too keen upon the matter in hand. The Basra boat of the 200 class is still here, waiting its copper sheathing. The Admiralty held the business up for months. I hope it may be shipped in August.
About Trenchard. You are mistaken. Since he resigned, his opinion has not once been asked about an Air Force matter - or expressed. The Air Staff made it a clean cut. He is sorry about it. So he cannot help Biffy. I wish something might be done, but cannot do it myself. That would make things worse, I fear.
Yours,
T.E.S.
Marvellous weather, this month. Think of the foxgloves in our quarry. They must be perfect. Poor Biscuit: dry in her shed.
| Source: | GR 188-9 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 3 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