Lawrence, in 1918. The dagger is the one he bought in Mecca, and later sold to put a new roof on his cottage.

T. E. Lawrence and Lowell Thomas pose together in Arab dress for Harry Chase. This photograph was probably taken after the war, in England (note the grass and the shrubbery in the background).

March 20, 1921: the imperial conference at Cairo. Figures immediately below the Sphinx’s head are, left to right, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, and Lawrence

Two of England’s most famous and celebrated figures: Nancy Astor and Bernard Shaw, surrounded by admirers.

Bernard and Charlotte Shaw a rare glimpse of them together, and apparently at leisure

Nancy Astor, in a characteristically energetic and combative pose.

Lawrence, barefoot, standing on a float of a seaplane

Clare Sydney Smith

Lawrence in RAF uniform, at Cattewater, about the time he became a friend of both Smiths.

Lawrence relaxes with Clare (seated, far right), with two of her friends, and dogs.

Clare and Lawrence, then Aircraftman Shaw, in the Biscuit.Clare is at the wheel.

Lawrence, at the wheel, puts the Biscuitthrough its paces at high speed, towing a water-skier

Front page of the Daily Sketch,announcing Lawrence’s death.

Eric Kennington’s bust of Lawrence for the memorial in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Eric Kennington works on his effigy of Lawrence.

Eric Kennington’s effigy of Lawrence, in St. Martin’s Church, Warcham, Dorset.

Lloyd George did not immediately inform the cabinet of his spur-of-the-moment gentleman’s agreement with Clemenceau, no doubt because he knew that some cabinet members would object. Nor was Clemenceau anxious to let his foreign minister, Pichon, know that he had just given away the oil of Mosul and the city of Jerusalem to the man who was known in Britain, not for nothing, as the “Welsh wizard.” Clemenceau soon came under attack from French imperialists and rightists for having betrayed France; and Lloyd George had inadvertently agreed to keep in place just those clauses of the Sykes-Picot agreement that most of his cabinet thought should be dropped or modified.

The day after this extraordinary example of impulsive personal diplomacy, Lawrence arrived back in Britain from France and went straight to see Lord Robert Cecil, to tell him about Feisal’s unfortunate reception in France. Cecil, as always sympathetic to Lawrence, immediately sent a note to Lloyd George asking him to meet with “Colonel Lawrence (the Arabian)” [sic],who wished to warn him of Clemenceau’s plans to undercut British and Arab aspirations in the Middle East. Because Lloyd George, unbeknownst to Cecil, had already agreed to those plans, the prime minister carefully avoided meeting with Lawrence, who was instead fobbed off with an invitation to attend his third session of the Eastern Committee, three days later. The opinion of the members was still strongly against the Sykes-Picot agreement—even Lawrence’s old opponent Lord Curzon spoke scathingly about the arrangements for Syria, describing them as “fantastic” and predicting (correctly) that they would be a source of “incessant friction between the French and ourselves, and the Arabs as third parties.”

Clearly, Curzon, like Cecil, had not yet been told of the prime minister’s bargain with Clemenceau; but A. J. Balfour apparently had,for to everyone’s surprise, since he seldom appeared at the committee, he spoke at length, emphasizing that Britain could not possibly repudiate the Sykes-Picot agreement, and that France’s claim to Syria and Lebanon must be respected to the letter. Balfour’s manner was famously languid and aloof, and even his friends complained that while he seemed urbane, he was ice-cold, but on this occasion he was unusually frank. If the Americans “chose to step in and cut the knot,” that was their business, “but we must not put the knife into their hand.” Balfour was foreign secretary, and while it could not be said that he enjoyed Lloyd George’s confidence, he was the senior Conservative member of the coalition government, and Lloyd George would almost certainly have revealed to Balfour what he still regarded as a coup, a triumph that gave the British everything they wanted in exchange for Syria and Lebanon, where they had nothing to gain. Those whose political instincts were sharp (and Lawrence was certainly among them) must have guessed that the government had in effect abandoned Feisal to make the best deal it could with the French.

On the other hand, the British, being British, were anxious to put a good face on things, and with that in mind the Foreign Office hastened to add Lawrence’s name to the members of the British delegation to the Peace Conference as an “advisor on special subjects,” in addition to being “a member of Feisal’s staff.” Thus Lawrence was placed in much the same ambiguous position at the Peace Conference as he had been in Arabia in 1917. Once again he was called on to manage Feisal on behalf of the British government, while at the same time attempting to secure for Feisal what he already knew Feisal wouldn’t get.

Lawrence himself would describe the postwar experience hauntingly in Seven Pillars of Wisdom,speaking for many of his generation who shared his bitterness: “We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”