13. Lt.-Col. Stewart Newcombe, Royal Engineers, who first met Lawrence during the Negev survey in 1914. He subsequently became his chief at the Intelligence Department in Cairo, and played a major role in the Revolt. Much admired by Lawrence, he was to remain a lifelong friend.
14. Lawrence travelled with camels in Syria before the war, but did not learn to ride until his first visit to the Hejaz in 1916. He quickly became an expert, though accounts of his fabulous rides which circulated after the war were often exaggerated.
15. The two principal instigators of the Arab Revolt: Sharif ‘Abdallah (seated) and Ronald Storrs (in white suit) at Jeddah in October 1916.
16. Sharif Feisal’s army falling back on Yanbu’ on the coast of the Red Sea, December 1916. Feisal was at the apex, surrounded by his bodyguard.
17.Feisal’s camp at dawn, December 1916. Four thousand tribesmen were gathered at Nakhl Mubarak, a large palm oasis in the Wadi Yanbu’. Lawrence arrived there at night on 2 December to find a scene of utter confusion; the wadi was full of woodsmoke and echoing with the noise of thousands of camels.
18 and 19. Feisal and his army captured Wejh in January 1917 and made it their headquarters for the next six months. From here Lawrence would attempt to cut the Hejaz railway.
20. Auda Abu Tayyi (left)of the Howaytat – one of the most feared raiders in the whole of Arabia. This photograph was taken by Lawrence in Wejh in May 1917, just before the expedition to take Aqaba – the turning point in the Arab Revolt and the crucial success of Lawrence’s life.
21. Auda (centre),with Sharif Nasir on his left, in a Howaytat tent in the Wadi Sirhan, June 1917. Auda, guide and strategist of the Aqaba mission, and Nasir, its commander, were in their different ways the most feared and able guerrilla leaders among the Hashemite forces.
22. Mohammad adh-Dhaylan (centre)with other Howaytat tribesmen.
23. The Turkish forces on the Hejaz railway had fully equipped repair battalions whose sole job was to maintain the line and repair it after an attack by Arab forces. Here a patrol repairs a stretch of track near Ma’an.
24. The bridge at Tel ash-Shehab, which Lawrence attempted to dynamite on the night of 7 November 1917. The daring assault was foiled when an Arab tribesman dropped his rifle, alerting the Turkish guard. For Lawrence, this failure was one of the most bitter personal defeats of the war.
25. Nasib al-Bakri, scion of a famous merchant clan of Damascus, was one of the founders of the Arab Revolt and a major contributor to the ‘Damascus Protocol’ which defined Arab policy in the event of victory against the Turks. He accompanied the Aqaba mission, but was isolated by Lawrence, who felt that his plan for a general rising in Syria was premature.
26. Dakhilallah al-Qadi, hereditary law-giver of the Juhayna. He initially fought with the Turks, then threw in his lot with the Hashemites, and dynamited the bridge at Aba an-Na’am. He and his son joined Lawrence on his first raids against the Hejaz railway, at Aba an-Na’am station and Kilometre 1121, in 1917.
27. The capture of Aqaba, 6 July 1917, photographed by Lawrence himself. The culmination of a brilliant two-month turning movement through some of the harshest desert in Arabia, Aqaba became the model for all the deep penetration commando raids of the twentieth century.
28. Aqaba fort from inland.
29. The interior of the Aqaba fort. The town was ruined and deserted, smashed to pieces by the shells of British gunships weeks before.
30. Ja’afar Pasha, Feisal and Pierce Joyce at Wadi Quntilla in August 1917. Ja’afar, a former officer in the Turkish army, was the commander of the Arab Regulars, who played an increasingly important part in the Arab campaigns. Lt.-Col. Joyce, Connaught Rangers, was technically Lawrence’s commanding officer and was chief of ‘Hedgehog’ – the British mission to the Arabs.
31. Nuri as-Sa’id, a brilliant young Iraqi artillery officer, was chief of staff to the Arab Regulars under Ja’afar Pasha. He played a distinguished role in the campaign, eventually becoming Prime Minister of Iraq.
32. The gate tower at Azraq, as photographed by Lawrence. In November 1917 he established himself in the southern gate tower for ‘a few days’ repose’. A year later he assembled a force at Azraq which encircled and isolated the Turks in Dara’a in the last few days of the campaign.
33. Lawrence fought his only pitched battle against the Turks on the plateau of Tafilah in January 1918, when a Turkish column from Kerak was routed and almost wiped out by Arab forces. Afterwards Lawrence photographed these lines of Turkish prisoners near Tafilah fort, which still stands today.
34. Sharif Zayd (in the centre at the back)and other Arab leaders with captured Austrian guns at Tafileh.
35. A smiling Lawrence at the army headquarters in Cairo in 1918.
36. General Allenby stepping out of his armoured car, Damascus, 3 October 1918. Allenby, much revered by Lawrence, regarded the Arab forces as a distraction for the Turks rather than major players in the invasion of Palestine and Syria.
37. The Hejaz Camel Corps rounding up Bedouin pillagers after the capture of Damascus, 2 October 1918.
38. Augustus John sketched Lawrence in a couple of minutes during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
39. Feisal was photographed at the same time.
40. Gertrude Bell, Sir Herbert Samuel, British High Commissioner in Palestine (in white helmet), Lawrence and Sharif ‘Abdallah, photographed in Amman in April 1921.
41. A portrait of Lawrence by William Roberts, autumn 1922. In August that year Lawrence had enlisted as an aircraftman in the RAF under the name John Hume Ross. Lord Trenchard wrote, ‘He is taking this step to learn what is the life of an air man,’ but Lawrence had other, darker motives for enlistment in the ranks.
42. By 1924 Lawrence had been dismissed from the RAF and had enlisted in the army as Private Ф. E. Shaw of the Royal Tank Corps, based at Bovington Camp in Dorset.