Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Jonathan Cape
Plymouth
28.iii.33
Dear Cape, The books arrived and are being devoured by everybody in armfuls. Very many thanks. It was a good idea, well carried out.
I suggest you try Garnett with the 'Syrian notes': if he found pleasure in them, an appendix would be easy. I am quite willing to set them out in form.
I don't like Arabic transcriptions: and the first thing about a title is to have it easily memorised by the public, for shop or library practice. So I would criticize his title and pen-name.
The note:- it isn't often that a rolling stone sets down, quite so plainly, the ways in which it has avoided moss. To my mind, the usefulness of the story is that it exemplifies the plain Scot abroad, and explains something of our ill-repute and formidability amongst stranger peoples. The unscrupulousness, force, ability of his career: this heedless stravaging about the Middle East: the entire lack of sensibility: the unmitigated plainness of his mind and life! There is something peculiarly unlovely about his relations with his fellows: but he has a liking for his horses and his dogs.
That's what I think about the book: and I note that it comes to about a hundred words: but the publisher should remark that the Clyde apprentice makes many errors of fact in his text . . . and that the editor has left them standing, so as not to give him a false air of authority. This is the Briton unadorned!
T.E.S.
Yes, I've had a. bad winter: but survive to enjoy the summer-taste of today. I leave the R.A.F. in a few days - without plans, except for rest.
| Source: | DG 766-7 |
| Checked: | dn/ |
| Last revised: | 19 July 2008 |
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