Contents lists
Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to B. E. Leeson
13 Birmingham Street
Southampton
13.4.34.
Dear Leeson
I keep on losing your address; but perhaps there is a providence to send this on. Some U.S.A. mutt forwarded me this precious paper. I don't value it as I should; but it seems to me that it ought to touch you in a very tender spot. What this man saw! What he heard! What he knew! Ah, I am ashamed of my bad memory. I had forgotten nearly everything he remembered. Even in the Seven Pillars I had been ungrateful to him, selfish, in not acknowledging his aerial co-operation while I blew up that train (but which train was it, I wonder? I have forgotten that too).
However there it is: and who the God-forsaken liar is, only you may guess - if you can, even.
Hail and farewell!
T.E.S
| Source: | DG 798 |
| Checked: | jw/ |
| Last revised: | 16 January 2006 |
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