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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Jonathan Cape
12/III/33
Dear Cape,
Here is Ian [McKinnon], complete from his first page to the last of his story, on his page 52; and to it I have pinned his last few pages, a dissertation upon the manners and customs of Syria. I think he much esteems these notes; but they seem to me neither science nor romance. Perhaps I know Syria too well to be thrilled: perhaps you will look at these last pages and say what you think. If you want them done out into straight text like the story, then send them back and I will do them; but they seem to me less happy and rather an overweight.
I have added one sentence to the end of the story, on my page 62, to save it ending in the air, with the absurd rehash of Munchausen. Why the idiot tacked this yarn on to the tale of a serious and veracious story of his life, God alone knows. I rather like the quirk to end it; but it is queer.
Books in payment. I have earned them, I think. Will you please pack in a case and send by rail to any one of the three or four stations in Plymouth? Addressed to A/C Shaw, R.A.F., Mount Batten, Plymouth. And you will greatly delight His Majesty's airmen.
Title and nom-de-plume of author are to be your work. Please ignore the editor, wholly and completely and for ever.
How hard it is to type with cut fingers.
Yours ever
T.E.S.
| Source: | DG 766 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 18 January 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