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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to Rear-Admiral Snagge
E. Cowes, I of Wight
5.vii.33
If you found a difficulty in addressing me, how insoluble is my problem in replying! So I've burked it.
It seems that you and I are to lunch with Feisal on Friday, at the Hyde Park Hotel, at one o'clock. Your company will (or would) strengthen me for the ordeal; for I have no civil clothes even imaginable for Hyde Park, or its hotels: and airmen (unless in the company of unimpeachable correctness) find it hard to gain access to kings.
So may we meet that midday and proceed in company? I trust so. But where will you be? The Admiralty? . . . perhaps. 23 Whitehall Court? Perhaps. Will you send me a line to make a meeting place. A note addressed A/c Shaw, c/o Sir Herbert Baker, 2 Smith Square, S.W.1, will find me on Thursday night or Friday morning. In fact if you have a slave who does your telephoning, a message can be phoned there: by looking up Baker, Sir Herbert, 2 Smith Square (he is a firm, and has offices as well) in the book.
I hope this is manageable!
Yours ever,
T. E. Shaw
Now remains the difficulty of an envelope to you. However, perhaps the 'Admiral' will carry all the responsibility!
| Source: | DG 770 |
| 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