15. A Bedui of the Haywat, Jordan. One of the small Bedu tribes inhabiting southern Jordan and the Sinai peninsula, the Haywat joined the Hashemite forces on Lawrence’s final push on Aqaba in July 1917.

1. T. E. Lawrence (Ned) aged about ten or eleven. A detail from a studio photograph in Oxford, c. 1900.

2. Sarah Lawrence with her children, in the porch of their home at Fawley on the shores of Southampton Water. Ned is sitting with his brothers Will, baby Frank and Bob. The photograph may have been taken by their father, Thomas Lawrence, shortly after their arrival in England, c. 1894.

3. In 1896 the family moved to Oxford, and Ned and his elder brother Bob went to school at the City of Oxford High School for Boys. Ned is sitting on the ground in the centre, surrounded by his form mates and their teacher, c. 1900.

4. Portrait of Gray, by Henry Scott Tuke. This painting, apparently showing Lawrence as a young soldier, was found among his possessions after his death and claimed as evidence of his disputed service in the artillery whilst still a schoolboy, perhaps in 1906. Though Lawrence may have met Tuke as a boy, the artist listed this portrait as having been painted in 1922. How it came into Lawrence’s possession is unknown.

5. In 1909 Lawrence spent three months travelling through Syria, visiting crusader castles. In August he spent three days at Kala’at al-Husn (Crak des Chevaliers), inspecting and photographing it. He wrote later that it was ‘the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world’.

6. The castle of Sahyun, with its slender needle of rock supporting the centre of a drawbridge, was one of the highlights of Lawrence’s 1909 tour.

7. Lawrence visited many other castles, including left, the Norman keep at Safita (this view from inside) and right, Harran, photographed on a subsequent visit in 1911.

8. Lawrence’s years at Carchemish were the happiest of his life. Here he worked with Leonard Woolley (right) over five seasons from 1912 until 1914. In this photograph they are standing on either side of a large Hittite slab.

9. Carchemish, a Hittite capital as early as 2500 BC, had been built on the intersection of two waterways and centred on a 130-foot acropolis which dominated the flat landscape.

10. Lawrence had two close friends among the local workforce at Carchemish: left, Dahoum, Salim Ahmad – the water-boy – and right, Sheikh Hammoudi, a former bandit, who was the foreman. Lawrence took these photographs in 1911.

11. (above) Workmen dragging up a large block of masonry at Carchemish. Photographed by Lawrence in 1911.

12. By the outbreak of war in 1914 Lawrence had already mastered Arabic and had managed to pass himself off occasionally as a native in northern Syria, where many non-Arab races intermingled. However, though he wore Arab dress throughout the Revolt he never imagined that he could masquerade as a true Arab, and though his Arabic was fluent witnesses say he spoke with a noticeably foreign accent.

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.