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. W. M. Dunn

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Plymouth

22.XI.32.

Dear Dunn,

I went to my cottage last Saturday: but it was all upset. There is a local builder doing his best to repair the roof, and all that kind of thing! So I couldn't find the Wilfred Owen: or at least, all I found was his Sassoon edition, and I'd rather give you the Blunden edition which is fuller.

Of the Hopkins, I found two copies: one was the large paper, with the portraits: the other this scruffy little edition. However it is not much disfigured with finger-marks or rude notes: and all the text is there. So please accept it as pis aller.

I should have sent the large paper and kept this, I know: but Hopkins is a fine poet and I value him - The Deutschland and the Epithalamion are both sustained efforts. Some of his 'to orders' and his devotionals are a bit laborious, I feel: but every now and then he is astonishing. Very 'repressed-sexy',* I feel. Celibacy has its dangers!

Yours,

T.E.S.

*homo -?

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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