43. In his later years Lawrence was addicted to speed, and was happiest when riding his 1000cc Brough Superior motorcycle, one of the most powerful machines of its day. Over the years he owned seven of these machines, all of which he nicknamed Boanerges and which were handmade for him by the manufacturer, George Brough.
44. The music room at Clouds Hill, with its large gramophone in the corner. Here Lawrence worked on The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,wrote scores of letters to artists, writers, composers and former colleagues, and entertained friends with musical weekends.
45. Lawrence died on 19 May 1935 and his funeral was held two days later at Moreton church in Dorset. The pall-bearers escorting the coffin included Colonel Stewart Newcombe, Sir Ronald Storrs and Eric Kennington, who was later to carve his effigy.
46 (left and above).Lawrence’s effigy in the old Anglo-Saxon church of St Martin, at Wareham in Dorset, is still visited by thousands of sightseers every year. ‘Sunlight was spilling in a cascade of dapples and brindles through the great window, falling on the crusader’s effigy of Lawrence in Arab dress, carved by his friend Eric Kennington.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am especially grateful for the advice and suggestions of John Lockman alias Jon Loken of the USA and Marten Schild of Holland – two contemporary Lawrence scholars who have managed in their different ways to examine the Lawrence myth in an original and relatively unprejudiced light.
I much appreciate the assistance of the Trustees of the T. E. Lawrence Estate for permission to see the embargoed material in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I am grateful for the help of Jack Flavell and the staff of the Bodleian Library, and that of the staff of the British Library, Manuscripts Reading Room, the Imperial War Museum, of John Fisher and the staff of the Public Record Office, Kew, the National Library of Scotland, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London.
I am also most grateful to the following previous biographers of Lawrence: Jeremy Wilson, Malcolm Brown, Lawrence James, Suleiman Mousa and John Mack. I much appreciate the assistance of Colin Wallace, and of Richard Belfield of Fulcrum Productions Ltd and his staff, Charles Furneaux of Channel 4, and the help and suggestions of Stephen White, Gerry Pinches and the rest of the film team which accompanied my journeys to Mudowwara and in Sinai. I would also very much like to thank Bertram Zank of Edinburgh, Sheikh Zaki M. Farsi of Jeddah, Tony Howard and Diane Taylor, Sabah Mohammad, Mifleh, Dakhillalah, Salem ‘Iid and the late Salem Abu Auda and their families of the Wadi Rum, Jibrin and Mohammad Hababeh of Aqaba, ‘Iid Swaylim of Nuwayba’, Sinai, and his family, Ronan and Leslie O’Donnell, my agent Anthony Goff of David Higham Associates, and Eleo Gordon and Lucy Capon of Penguin Books. I would like to express a special thanks to Dr Basil Hatim of the School of Arabic Translation and Interpreting, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, for his help in authenticating Lawrence’s letter in Arabic.
I would also like to thank my parents-in-law, General and Prof. Peru, for the use of their houses in Sardinia, and lastly my wife, Mariantonietta, and my son, Burton, without whom this book would not have been possible.
MICHAEL ASHER
Frazione Agnata, Sardinia, and Nairobi, Kenya
NOTES ON THE TEXT
Key
Brown Letters
The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, ed. Malcolm Brown, Oxford, 1991
Garnett Letters
The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett, London, 1938
HL
The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers, ed. M. R. Lawrence, Oxford, 1954
MS. Res.
Reserve Manuscripts Collection: Bodleian Library, Oxford
SPW, Oxford text
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Oxford text (limited edn), London, 1926
SPW, 1935
T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London, 1935
LH
T. E. Lawrence to His Biographer Liddell Hart, London, 1938
RG
T. E. Lawrence to His Biographer Robert Graves, London, 1938
Friends
A. W. Lawrence (ed.), T. E. Lawrence by His Friends, London, 1938
Leeds Letters
T. E. Lawrence, Letters to E. T. Leeds, ed. J. Wilson, London, 1988
Wilson
Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia. The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence, London, 1989
Mack, Prince
John Mack: A Prince of Our Disorder “ the Life of T. E. Lawrence, London, 1976
Introduction: The Valley of the Moon
1. SPW,1935, p. 363.
1. Apparent Queen Unveiled Her Peerless Light
1. Celandine Kennington, MS. Res., c. 228.
2. Franзois Bedarida, A Social History of England,London, 1979, p. 162.
3. RG.
4. John Betjeman, Victorian and Edwardian Oxford,Oxford, 1971.
5. Celandine Kennington, MS. Res., c. 228.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.
8. ibid.
9. Mack, Prince.
10. Celandine Kennington, MS. Res., c. 228.
11. Brown Letters,p. 325.
12. ibid., p. 326.
13. Mack, Prince,p. 7.
14. MS. Res., c. 228.
15. Proverbs 13:12.
16. Marten Schild,’ The Immaculate Hero and His Imperfect Shadow’,unpublished MS: I am most grateful to Marten Schild for the inspiration of several of the ideas on this page.
17. MS. Res., c. 228.
18. British Library, Add. MSS. 45903, Charlotte Shaw Letters.
19. ibid.
20. Mack, Prince.
21. MS. Res., c. 228.
22. British Library, Add. MSS. 45903, Charlotte Shaw Letters.
23. SPW,1935, p. 446.
24. See Arnie Lawrence in a letter to Miss Early, 17 December 1963. ‘TE had a more than customary fear of pain … nor was he a natural hero or naturally brave.’ MS. Res., b. 56.
25. Friends,p. 37.
26. ibid.
27. British Library, Add. MSS. 45903, Charlotte Shaw Letters.