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 Clare Sydney Smith

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119, Clarence Road,
East Cowes,
Isle of Wight

30.V.33.

I'm sorry, but Whitsun was booked a while ago. I am to meet Bruce Rogers, my American printer, and do proofs with him; for a new edition of the Odyssey translation. He had just come across from the States and is awaiting me in London.

This job (of boat-building) needed doing. At Cowes I am helpless, all the contracts having been long placed - but never again, while I am involved. The waste of money, the stupidity, the ineffectiveness.... I get angry in thinking of it. The Air Force must do better, if it is to justify itself.

I hope the Carlow boat goes well and that the weather helps. Think of me, working hard in Cliffords Inn, in a room so dark that the lights burn all day. I have so much liked this past fortnight in the island, and ridden all over it peacefully, no crowds having yet arrived. One M.L. came into the roads and I wondered if it was Carlow's - but it went at once, before I could ask.

Last week I met the Old Lord and Eric Lord, Saunders Roe are a little better off, in the aircraft department, through selling Clouds and Cuttys. Their boatyard is nearly dead: only they have just built a little £900 cruiser that is good value. Desperate times for ship-builders.

The first of these pinnaces launches about June 12, and after its trials I want to give myself a holiday. I shall write again then-abouts.

Commend me to all bipedal and quadrupedal Smiths!

T.E.S

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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