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 Sir Philip Sassoon

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Mount Batten
Plymouth

21.3.33.

Dear Sir Philip

Plymouth is 200 miles too far away - otherwise I would have seen you somehow and talked over my affairs, which puzzle me. Do you get into places, sometimes, and doubt what road out to choose? I've been like that since October last, and finally decided to cut the knot. There's an instinct to hide at the far end of the burrow, when one is sick or troubled, and I have been both, this winter.

Last Saturday I saw Sir Geoffrey Salmond and told him how I stood. He becomes C.A.S. just before I am due to go, and perhaps I ought not to have bothered him - but it is done, anyway.

Hendon wouldn't have done [3 lines omitted]

I wish I could have seen you, before I went; but Sunday seems to pass so quickly in winter. My bike eats the miles, but in darkness it has to slow up. However, soon I will have all leisure: and then I should manage Lympne again in summer. Lympne, I feel, is probably your masterpiece.

Yours ever

T.E. Shaw

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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