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 Lord Lloyd

---

Hythe

23.VI.32

Dear G.L.,

This is, you know, immensely distinguished. Most kings, some Presidents, (the best, like Lincoln, and some of the not-best, like Garfield and Doumer) but very few private persons... off-hand I can remember only Rathenau. It is magnificent, and I congratulate you heartily.

Of course it was only a miss, for which those of us who like you
are personally grateful - and misses do not live in history, like hits. Some mean and incompetent Egyptian, I should guess. The poor boobs. Explosives aren't really difficult at all, you know. Only this afternoon I was getting results out of a smoke candle with some of Payn's firework detonators... little spitty things that a volt or so will fire. I can see the practitioner of the future making use of a telephone connection to fire his bomb.

Or do we flatter you, and is the Bishop of Carlisle really a runnable stag? I cannot stomach the notion. Four and sixty Bishops have I met, and not one of them worth powder. No, I think it was you. The lower fourth had a brain-storm perhaps, and hoped to cut short a speech.

Here is the Lady, very moved over your danger. I write her cheerfully, saying you have been in worse places and run greater risks. But what a scoop: O most fortunate of politicians, what a scoop!

Yours ever

T E S.

I lose my character, here in Southampton Water, for I run by every yacht, large and small, and scrutinise it for proconsular bodies. They think me very curious.

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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