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

---

13, Birmingham Street,
Southampton.

Tuesday, 1.VIII.33.

Ha now, this is urgent. I am to visit Lympne on Friday next, for lunch (and when I lunches, as you will remember from Batten, I usually stays the night) and on Sunday I am back in Wiltshire: but Thursday night:- where are you and the G/C on Thursday night? If it is Manston may I arrive to lunch on Thursday? Full house perhaps...?

Then shake me down with Egbert and Ethelfleda, or reserve a Macdonald in a hut. It really is a chance, perhaps my last. I am so nailed into Southampton Water by these jobs : up and down all day and all week : that's me.

And congratulate Squeak - beg her pardon - Miss Smith. Facing me on Cowes Pier, each time I embark, is a poster illustrating Ramsgate. Squeak is the illustrious one, in a green bathing costume, looking a little chilled about the elbows which are firmly driven into her... ribs, I think it is. There or thereabouts.

Congratulate her and it is exactly the spot of colour needed for the end wall of the big room by the dining-room door. Too late, alas, too late. Singapore and the shadow of a palm tree there. Alas, poor Leo.

Here is a form: please wire yes or not-so-good. 13, Birmingham Street is me, for a while yet.

Yours,

T.E.S.
 

Note
Macdonald - airman's bed

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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