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.

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.