Whether the overthrow of a particularly nasty local despot will assist materially in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is likely to remain a matter of acrimonious contention. For the first time in its history, Britain has gone to war without the support of a significant swathe of its population. Sections of the traditionally patriotic middle and working classes have opposed the war and condemned Mr Blair’s government for undertaking it on flimsy grounds.
In the meantime, British troops are again occupying and policing an Arab country. They are officially encouraged to read thoroughly Lawrence’s 1917 guidelines for handling Arabs and building a rapport with them. His instructions are simple and can never be bettered. Throughout he emphasises close study of Arab ways which alone can create that vital sensitivity to their culture, habits and religion. They are different and deserve respect. ‘The foreigner and the Christian is not a popular person in Arabia’ and so he must tread softly, carefully and with patience. Above all, was the avoidance of any suggestion of superiority. ‘You will be like an actor in a foreign theatre, playing a part day and night for months, without rest, and for an anxious stake’.
So modern fighting men ponder the words of Lawrence, a national hero from what for most of them is a remote past. He invested desert war with a peculiar glamour, conspicuously lacking in today’s operations. Yet Lawrence’s world of hard-nosed power broking, manipulation, tension and volatile Islamic fundamentalism has not gone away. He understood that he was useful to the Arabs, which won him gratitude. Love and trust were and still are another matter. If today’s readers of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom gain any fresh insights into the modern Middle East, they will be simple and constant truths. The region is still one whose people have a different religion, different historical perspectives and therefore a different culture and view of the world and their place in it. Lawrence appreciated all this and that, ideally, the Arabs wished to be left alone. The circumstances of his times made this impossible, which he regretted. The same is true today which is why Lawrence is worth reading.
Select Bibliography
Official Archives
Public Record Office, Kew.
Admiralty: Adm 53; Adm 137 [Telegrams].
Air Ministry: Air 1.
Cabinet: Cab 42, Cab 45 [Papers relating to Official War Histories].
Home Office: HO 42.
Foreign Office: FO 141; FO 371; FO 686 [Jiddah Consulate Files]; FO 800 [Sir Edward Grey Papers]; FO 861 [Aleppo Consular Files]; FO 882 [Arab Bureau Files].
War Office: WO 33 [Telegrams]; WO 95 [War Diaries]; WO 106 [Intelligence Files]; WO 154 [War Diaries]; WO 157 [Intelligence Diaries and Reports]; WO 158.
Kitchener Papers: PRO 30.
India Office Library, Blackfriars, London. L. Mil 17 [War Diaries]; L.P. & S. 10 [Various files].
Service Historique pour L’Histoire de l’Armée de la Terre, Chateau de Vincennes, Paris. 16N 3200; 17N 498-9 [Reports and Telegrams of French Military Mission to Hejaz].
Private Archives
Field-Marshal Lord Allenby, Papers, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives [King’s College, London].
Field-Marshal Lord Allenby, various papers [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
F.T. Birkinshaw, memorandum on T.E. Lawrence [Imperial War Museum].
General Sir Harry Chauvel, various papers [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
General Sir Gilbert Clayton, letters and papers [Sudan Archive, University of Durham].
Sir Gerard Clauson, papers [Imperial War Museum].
Major-General Guy Dawnay, letters, papers and diaries [Imperial War Museum].
Sir Wyndham Deedes, letters and diaries [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
Papers of Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds [Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London].
Major Henry Garland, letters and memoranda [Imperial War Museum].
Commander David Hogarth, letters [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
Colonel Pierce Joyce, memoranda on T.E. Lawrence [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, research notes for The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia [Imperial War Museum].
T.E. Lawrence, various papers and letters [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
T.E. Lawrence, letters to Mrs Bernard Shaw [British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 56, 495-6].
Lord Lloyd, letters and diaries [Churchill College, Cambridge].
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. Diaries [Rhodes College, Oxford].
Viscount Milner, Papers [Bodleian Library, Oxford].
General Sir Archibald Murray and Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, correspondence 1916–17 [British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 52, 461–2].
General Sir Francis Wingate, letters and papers [Sudan Archive, University of Durham].
William Yale, Reports to the State Department, 1917-20 [St Antony’s College, Oxford].
Published Works
All books are published in London unless stated otherwise.
A. Aaronson, With the Turks in Palestine (1917).
U.P. Ahb-Allah, The Islamic Struggle for Syria (Berkeley, California, 1983).
C.F. Adam, The Life of Lord Lloyd (1948).
R. Adelson, Mark Sykes: Portrait of an Amateur (1975).
N.Z. Ajay, ‘Political Intrigue and Suppression in the Lebanon during World War I’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5 (1974).
Richard Aldington, Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry (1955).
W.E.D. Allen and P. Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Russian Border, 1828–1921 (Cambridge, 1953).
R.S. Amery, My Political Life, vol. II: 1914–29 (1953).
F. Armitage, The Desert and the Stars: A Portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1956).
Anon, review of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, London Mercury, 188 (June 1935).
G. Antonius, The Arab Awakening (1938).
Sir George Arthur, General Sir John Maxwell (1932).
W.H. Auden, The Orators (1932).
——, Look Stranger (1936).
A.J. Barker, The Mesopotamian Campaign of 1914–1918 (1967).
G.W. Barrow, The Fire of Life (1943).
M. Barrows, ‘Mission Civilisatrice: French Colonial Policy in the Middle East’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986).
Gertrude Bell, From Amurath to Amurath (1911).
Lady Bell (ed.), The Letters of Gertrude Bell (2 vols, 1927).
N. and H. Bentwich, Mandate Memories (1963).
G. Blake and R. King, ‘The Hejaz Railway and the Pilgrimage to Mecca’, Asian Affairs, 59 (1972).
I. Bloch, Sexual Life in England Past and Present, trans. W. Forstern (1938).
A. Boyle, Trenchard: Man of Vision (1962).
N.N.E. Bray, Shifting Sands (1934).
——, A Paladin of Arabia (1936).
E. Brémond, Le Hedjaz dans la Guerre Mondiale (Paris, 1931).
E.A.W. Bridge, A History of Ethiopia (2 vols, 1927).
John Buchan, Memory Hold-The-Door (1940).
R. Bullard, The Camels Must Go (1961).
B.C. Busch, Britain, India and the Arabs, 1914–1921 (Berkeley, California, 1971).
P.R. Butler, ‘T.E. Lawrence’, Quarterly Review, 266 (April 1938).
C.E. Callwell (ed.), Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries (2 vols, 1927).
E. Candler, ‘Lawrence in the Hejaz’, Blackwood’s, 243 (December 1925).
Christopher Caudwell [C. St John Sprigg], Studies in a Dying Culture (1938).
C.W. Ceram. Narrow Pass. Black Mountain (1956).
J. Charmley, Lord Lloyd and the Decline of the British Empire (1987).
W.J. Childs, Across Asia Minor on Foot (1918).
Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (1941 edn).
D. Commins, ‘Religious Reformers and Arabists in Damascus, 1885–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986).
F. Crawford, ‘The Campaigns against Aldingt
on’s T.E. Lawrence’, London Magazine (June/July 1993).
V. Cunningham, British Writers in the Thirties (1988).
Daily Review of the Foreign Press (Foreign Office, 1914–20).
J.E. Dayton, ‘Tracking the Train Lawrence Wrecked’, The Times, 4.12.64.
Documents on British Foreign Policy, 4th Series, IV (1952).
Laurence Durrell, The Spirit of the Place (1969).
Halide Edib, Memoirs of Halidé Edib (New York, n.d.). C.E. Edmonds [C.E. Carrington], Lawrence of Arabia (1935).
L. Einstein, Inside Constantinople (1917).
A. Emin, Turkey in the World War (New Haven, 1930).
L. Evans, United States Policy and the Partition of Turkey, 1914–24 (Baltimore, 1965).
C. Falls, Armageddon, 1918 (1964).
C.R.L. Fletcher, ‘David George Hogarth’, Geographical Journal, II (April 1928).
C.V. Fordley, Burcaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, 1980).
E.M. Forster, ‘Cloud’s Hill’, Listener, 1.9.38.
——, “‘The Mint” by T. E. Lawrence’, Listener, 17.2.55.
——, Abinger Harvest (Penguin edn, 1967). I. Friedman, The Question of Palestine (1973).
B. Gardner, Allenby (1965).
David Garnett (ed.), The White—Garnett Letters (1968).
Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. IV: 1916–22, and companion volumes (1975).
L. Gillet, ‘Comment Fut Inventé L‘Emir Faycal’, Révue des Deux Mondes, 15.7.27.
J. Goldberg, ‘Philby as a Source of Early-Twentieth-Century Saudi History: A Critical Examination’, Middle East Studies, 21 (1985).
——, ‘Captain Shakespeare and Ibn Saud: A Balanced Reappraisal’, Middle East Studies, 22 (1986).
Philip Graves, Briton and Turk (1941).
——, The Life of Sir Percy Cox (1941).
Robert Graves, Lawrence and the Arabs (1927).
H.S. Gullett, The Australian Imperial Force in Syria and Palestine (Sydney, 1939: volume 7 of Australian Official History of the War, ed. C.E.W. Bean).
H.S. Gullett, C. Barrett and D. Barker, Australia in Palestine (Sydney, 1919).
C. Guy Powles, The New Zealanders in Sinai and Palestine (Auckland, 1922).
Lord Hankey, The Supreme Command (2 vols, 1961).
J. Hart, A Levantine Log-Book (1905).
Rupert Hart-Davies (ed.), Sassoon Diaries, 1915–18 (1983), Sassoon Diaries, 1920–22 (1981), Sassoon Diaries, 1923-25 (1985).
L.P. Hartley, “‘The Mint”: A Failed Masterpiece’, Listener, 14.4.55.
Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh (1959).
A. Herbert, Mons, Anzac and Kut (1919).
A.J. Hill, Chauvel of the Light Horse (Melbourne, 1978).
D.G. Hogarth, Accidents of an Antiquary’s Life (1911).
——, The Ancient East (1914).
——, ‘Lawrence of Arabia: The Story of His Book’, The Times, 13.12.26.
——, ‘Lawrence and the Arabs’, The Times Literary Supplement, 10.3.27.
——, (ed.), [L .Woolley and T.E. Lawrence], The Wilderness of Zin (Palestine Exploration Fund, 1915).
B. Holden Reid, ‘T.E. Lawrence and Liddell Hart’, History, 70 (1985).
H.M. Hyde, Solitary in the Ranks (1977).
D. Ingrams (ed.), Palestine Papers (1972).
Christopher Isherwood, Exhumations (1966).
R.R. James, Gallipoli (1965 edn).
——(ed.), Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (1967).
C.T Jarvis, Arab Command: The Biography of Lieutenant-Colonel Peake Pasha (1946 edn).
W.E. Jennings Bramley, ‘The Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula’, Palestine Exploration Fund Proceedings (1914).
H.A. Jones, The War in the Air, vol. V (Oxford, 1935).
T. Jones, A Diary with Letters, 1931–50 (Oxford, 1954).
E. Kedourie, England and the Middle East (Cambridge, 1956).
——, The Chatham House Version (1970).
——, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth: The McMahon Correspondence and its Interpretation, 1914-39 (Cambridge, 1976).
M. Kent (ed.), The Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire (1984).
P.S. Khoury, ‘Factionalism among Syrian Nationalists during the French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 13 (1981).
——, ‘The Tribal Shaykh, French Policy and the Nationalist Movement in Syria between two World Wars’, Middle East Studies, 18 (1982).
A. Kirkbride, A Crackle of Thorns (1958).
——, An Awakening (1971).
Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (1969).
D.H. Lawrence (ed.), Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters, 1911–1925 (1984).
A.W. Lawrence (ed.), T.E. Lawrence by His Friends (1937).
——, (ed.), Secret Dispatches from Arabia (1939).
——, Letters to T.E. Lawrence (1956).
M.R. Lawrence (ed.), The Home Letters of T.E. Lawrence and His Brothers (1954).
T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph (1926).
——, Revolt in the Desert (1927).
——, Oriental Assembly (1939).
——, The Mint (1973).
——, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, ed. David Garnett (1938).
——, The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, ed. M. Brown (1988).
T.E. Lawrence, Letters to His Biographers, Robert Graves and Basil Liddell Hart (1938).
H. Leach, T.E. Lawrence: Some Centenary Reflections (1988).
S. Leslie, Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923).
N.N. Lewis, Nomads and Settlers in Syria and Jordan, 1800-1980 (1987).
B. Liddell Hart, T.E. Lawrence: In Arabia and After (1934).
A.L. Macfie, ‘The Straits Question in the First World War’, Middle East Studies, 9 (1983)
J. Mack, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1976).
Compton Mackenzie, Extremes Meet (1928).
——, Gallipoli Memories (1929).
——, Athenian Memories (1931).
——, My Life and Times: Octaves (1915–23) (1966).
Sir George MacMunn, ‘Lawrence in Full’, Saturday Review, 19.3.27.
and C. Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine (4 vols, 1928–30).
A. MacPhail, Three Persons (1929).
W.G. Macpherson, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Medical Services General History, vols III and IV (1924).
——(ed.), History of the Great War Based on Official Documents: Diseases of the Great War, vol. 1 (1924).
A. Mandelstam, Le Sort de L’Empire Ottoman (Paris, 1917).
W.T. Massey, Allenby’s Final Triumph (1920).
J.C. Masterman, On The Chariot Wheel (1975).
Robin Maugham, Escape from the Shadows (1972).
R. Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary, 1917–56 (1956).
J.L. Miller, ‘The Syrian Revolt of 1925’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 8 (1977).
F.J. Moberley, The Campaign in Mesopotamia (3 vols, 1923).
Lord Moran, Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (1968 edn).
H. Morganthau, Secrets of the Bosphorus (1918).
S. Mousa, T.E. Lawrence: An Arab View, trans. A. Butros (Oxford, 1967).
——, ‘A Matter of Principle: King Hussain of the Hijaz and the Arabs of Palestine’, Middle East Studies, 19 (1983).
——, ‘Arab Sources on Lawrence of Arabia: New Evidence’, The Army Quarterly and Defence Journal, 116 (1986).
L. Namier, In the Margin of History (1939).
S.E. Newcombe, ‘Report on the Survey of Sinai and Southern Palestine’, Palestine Exploration Fund Proceedings (1914).
Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930–39 (1966).
V. Ocampo, 338171, T.E. (1963).
P.M. O’Brien, T.E. Lawrence: A Bibliography (Winchester, 1988).
P. O’Prey (ed.), In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves, 1914–46 (1982).
P. O
’Prey, Between Moon and Moon: Letters of Robert Graves, 1946–72 (1984).
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: 1919, The Paris Peace Conference, vols XI, XII (New York, 1969).
G. Payn and S. Morley, The Noel Coward Diaries (1982).
Earl Percy, Highlands of Asiatic Turkey (1901).
H. St.J. Philby, Arabian Days (1948).
——, Forty Years in the Wilderness (1956).
B. de Pocock, Dead Men Tell No Tales (1943).
Y. Porath, ‘Abdullah’s Greater Syria Programme’, Middle East Studies, 20 (1984).
J. Presland, Deedes Bey (1942).
R.M.P. Preston, The Desert Mounted Corps: an account of the Cavalry Operations in Palestine and Syria, 1917–1918 (1921).
A.G. Prys-Jones, ‘Recollections of T.E. Lawrence’, Jesus College Record (1986).
Sir Herbert Read, ‘Self Portrait of a Misfit’, Listener, 8.12.38.
J. Rennell Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories, 1902–1919 (1925).
J. Richards and J. Hulbert, ‘Censorship in Action: The Case of Lawrence of Arabia’, Journal of Contemporary History, 19 (1983-4).
Vyvyan Richards, Portrait of T.E. Lawrence of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1936).
W. Robertson, From Private to Field-Marshal (1921).
E.H.T. Robinson, Lawrence: the Story of his Life (1935).
——, Lawrence the Rebel (1947).
S.C. Rolls, Steel Chariots in the Desert (1937).
S. Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, vol. II: 1919–31 (1972).
H.W. Sachar, The Emergence of the Middle East, 1914–24 (1969).
——, Europe Leaves the Middle East, 1936–54 (1974).
E.W. Said, Orientalism (1987 edn).
L. von Sandars, Five Years in Turkey (United States Navy Institute, Annapolis, 1927).
Martin Seymour-Smith, Robert Graves (1982).
G.B. Shaw, ‘The Latest From Colonel Lawrence’, Spectator, 13.2.27.
J. Sherwood, No Golden Journey (1973)
C.K. Shorter, ‘The Unknown King of Arabia’, Sphere, 8.8.28.
G. Slade [Stephen Bartlett], In Lawrence’s Bodyguard (1930).
——, Led by Lawrence (1934).
J. Springhall, B. Fraser and M. Hoare, Sure and Steadfast: A History of the Boys’ Brigade, 1883–1983 (1984).
Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (1922).
Golden Warrior, The Page 57