He correctly identified the military strategy that would have, if not for Winston Churchill and the French, knocked Turkey out of WW I early on and protected the Suez Canal. On an afternoon in late 1914, having absolutely no previous military experience, Lawrence was commissioned a 2nd Lt. Somewhat by chance he became an expert traveler, castle historian, archeologist, linguist, and cartographer in the Middle East, then the southern reaches of the decaying Ottoman Empire. He graduated near the top of his class from Oxford University, a first class degree in history.

He stopped growing at about 5 foot 2 inches but had a charismatic personality (along with atmospheric blue eyes) that made him seem to be about 6-6. tick?” and “how did he achieve what he did given that he repeatedly stuck his thumb in the eye of authority?”Ī brief synopsis of what he did. The questions that Anderson attempts to answer about Lawrence revolve around “what made T.E. This story appears early in Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia and sets the tone for what is to come.

This was neither the first nor the last time Lawrence said no (Hell, no!) to power. Lawrence refused the award and stalked out of the hall, presumably with back stiff and head held high. Lawrence had told one of his mates that his ambition was to be awarded a knighthood by the time he was thirty. The Queen was there, so too were numerous high-ranking politicians and military officials. His public display happened on October 31, 1918, when the thirty-year old colonel, already famous but not yet notorious, entered Buckingham Palace to receive a knighthood, specifically the Knight Commander of the British Empire, from HRH King George V. You remember World War I: Armageddon, the war to make the world safe for democracy, the war to end all wars. His words above came at a later time, part of his famous memoir The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1922, some four years after the Great War’s end. These words aside, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence displayed his disillusionment more dramatically on a public occasion in 1918.

“We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.” – T. Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson