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 G. Wren Howard

---

13 Birmingham Street
Southampton

17.XII.33

Dear Howard,

I confess to a lively apprehension of that potential worst-seller of yours. Please be careful of your puffs. One today said that it
contained some yet unpublished notes of mine. Not true. It may have some unpublished letters from me (few of my friends having yet given up their letters to the press) but that is different.

Few people, I fancy, could know there was a 'life' of them on the stocks and not agree to read it first, for probable errors of fact to correct. Had I read Lowell Thomas, how much trouble I would have been saved! My reading Liddell Hart's effort does not imply either approval or collaboration. I regret it and apprehend it, keenly.

I want to be assured about the title, too. He told me Lawrence like that. I must protest (and shall protest publicly, if you insist still) that Lawrence, for this generation, is D.H.L., an infinitely greater man than all of us rolled together. Inverted commas are not enough to avoid trespass on him. Please consider this carefully, or you'll get into deep water. Colonel 'Lawrence if you want to use that long name: or some clear indication that I'm no trying to arrogate to myself the use of D.H.L's name.

Yours ever,

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