The Man with the Gold

T.E. Lawrence Society Announcement

Following on from the success of The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion at the 2014 Symposium, the Society is pleased to bring a new play to the stage at the 2016 Symposium. The Man with the Gold has been written by distinguished author Jan Woolf. The performance at St John’s College on the evening of Friday September 23 will be the world premiere. 

The British government is at war again in the Middle East and never before has an understanding of the historical dynamic linking the Sykes-Picot treaty at the end of WWI to the present day been so vital. This new play, started by Jan Woolf on an archaeological dig in Jordan in 2013, has been completed for the centenary of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI. Its intention is to unravel the complex “hero” it produced in T. E. Lawrence. Set in the present, it centres on two archaeologists as they prepare a centenary exhibition in a war museum. As they unravel their own personal connections, ghosts are unwittingly summoned and the myth of “Lawrence of Arabia” excavated. 

“It’s terrific: witty, unusual, and timely, and it’s going to be very watch-able. Bringing Lawrence to life through the preparation for an exhibition is a riveting device. You feel he is being dug out of the desert sand in front of you to rise up like a scrap of desert mist. A wraith with a message who blasts his way into the present to deliver it.” Heathcote Williams

14th Biennial T.E. Lawrence Symposium, St. John's College, Oxford, 23-25 September 2016

The T.E. Lawrence Society will be returning to St John’s College, Oxford, for its 14th Symposium in September 2016. Coinciding with the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1916, a special programme of lectures is being planned to mark this very special centenary, plus the world premiere of a new play by Jan Woolf, The Man with the Gold. Booking forms are included with this Newsletter, and will be downloadable from the Society’s website at www.telsociety.org.uk.

Friday September 23

Roger Holehouse: The Strategic Context to the Arab Revolt

Roger Holehouse OBE is a former Royal Navy officer and Foreign and Common-wealth Office civil servant. He is also a National Trust volunteer at Clouds Hill. Roger will examine the shifts in British policy towards the Ottoman Empire from the middle of the 19th century until its dissolution in 1922. He will examine the reasons behind Britain moving away from supporting the Ottomans, as a buffer against Russian expansion, in the Crimean War, to a position of fighting against them, as an ally of Russia, and supporting the Arab Revolt, in the 1914-18 war.

Dr Steve Mills, Professor Paul T. Nicholson and Hilary Rees: Views of An Antique Land: Egypt and Palestine During the First World War

Dr Steve Mills is a lecturer in archaeology at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University and a specialist in auditory and sensory archaeology. He has worked in Egypt and has an established interest in landscape archaeology.

Professor Paul T. Nicholson is also at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University where he teaches Egyptian archaeology and early technology. He regularly directs projects in Egypt and has an established interest in early archaeological photography.

Hilary Rees is the project officer for Views of an Antique Land. She is secretary to the Gwent branch of the Western Front Association.

This paper looks at the background to, and some of the results of, a Heritage Lottery-funded project based at Cardiff University which is examining images of Egypt and Palestine taken during the First World War. The project will provide a website which descendants of those who served in the conflict can use to better understand the landscape and societies in which their ancestors served, but will go further by providing images of the archaeological sites and settlements as well as photographs of military subjects. These, often dated, images give what is, quite literally, a snapshot of Egypt and Palestine at this important period and should prove useful to archaeologists, historians and film makers as well as to those researching military or family history.

Accompanied by a small exhibition of ephemera from the project

Saturday September 24

Philip Walker: New Light on the Arab Revolt and the Forgotten Few Who Shaped It

Philip Walker is a retired archaeologist who spent many years as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments with English Heritage. He is writing a book on his research, which grew out of a paper he presented at the Society’s 2010 Symposium. He has travelled in Libya, Palestine, Morocco, Xinjiang (the Muslim far west of China) and other parts of Central Asia. He has a particular interest in the relationship between British Intelligence and the Arab Revolt.

New research into a key group of British officers based at Jeddah demonstrates that they saved the Arab Revolt from likely collapse before and during T. E. Lawrence’s indispensable involvement. In particular, the influence of one officer over the Revolt’s leader, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, was at least as important as that of Lawrence over Emir Feisal. Without these forgotten efforts, the world would not have heard of “Lawrence of Arabia”. This paper draws on archival research including extraordinary unknown private collections of Arab Revolt photographs, letters, diaries, memoirs and other documents. Philip discovered this material by tracking down the descendants of British officers in Panama, Jamaica, the USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Denmark and various parts of the UK. A fresh interpretation of the Revolt will be complemented by a selection from hundreds of stunning photographs, to be shown for the first time.

Professor Ali Allawi: Feisal and the Arab Revolt

Born in Baghdad, Ali Allawi graduated in 1968 with a BSc in Civil Engineering. He continued his postgraduate studies in regional planning at the London School of Economics, and went on to obtain an MBA from Harvard University in 1971. He worked in finance and investment during the 1970s, and following an academic period at St Antony’s College, Oxford, he was appointed Minister of Trade of Iraq in 2004. In the same year he was appointed to be Iraq’s first post-war Minister of Defence. In 2005 he was elected to Iraq’s Transitional National Assembly and became Minister of Finance. Since 2006 he has been elected to different academic appointments around the world, appeared on many Western TV programmes and delivered numerous lectures related to Iraq. He has published many books on Iraq and the Islamic civilisation and in 2014 his major political biography of Feisal appeared to great acclaim. He continues to lecture and present programmes on the politics and history of the Middle East.

This paper looks at the type of states or confederation of states and political organisations that Feisal expected as an outcome of the Arab Revolt, Lawrence’s perspectives on this, and the final pattern of states that did in fact emerge. One contention is that Feisal’s vision was far more conducive to stability, security and prosperity in the post-Ottoman world than the failed mandate system.

George Thompson: Seeing Arabia: The Personal Photographs of T. E. Lawrence taken between 1916 and 1918

George Thompson lives in the United States where he devotes his time to lecturing, writing and developing programmes on the First World War. After more than 25 years in higher education, as a university professor and assistant dean, he returned to academia as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the History and Philosophy of Medicine Department at the University of Kansas Medical Centre. Professor Thompson’s knowledge of the war and his skill in programme development resulted in his being elected President of the World War Historical Association, Chair of the Midwest Chapter of the Western Front Association, US Branch, and serving as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee for the National World War One Museum and Memorial.

Seeing Arabia will examine a selection of wartime photographs taken by T. E. Lawrence. The images will be viewed from several contexts: geographical, chronological, historical, and as photographic objects. These approaches will reveal to us the man, his values and his photographic motives, and allow us to evaluate his effectiveness as a photographer. The presentation will place Lawrence in a larger context which was his era’s use of photography as a tool to document one’s perceptions and experiences.

Seeing Arabia will describe how Lawrence’s pre-war life established his aesthetic and historical views that would influence his future choice of photo-graphic content and techniques. It will also reveal why his images are not just a significant historical record but are elegant visual statements.

John Johnson-Allen: T. E. Lawrence and the Red Sea Patrol

John Johnson-Allen went to sea in 1961 with the BP Tanker Company and spent nearly nine years at sea, rising to the rank of Second Officer. He then pursued a career in the property industry. Since retiring 10 years ago, he has gained an MA in maritime history and been elected a Liveryman of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Institute of Navigation, Chairman of the Institute of Seamanship and a member of the Society for Nautical Research. He has written two previous books: Voices from the Bridge (with David Smith) and They Couldn’t Have Done It Without Us; The Merchant Navy in the Falklands War. He lectures on maritime subjects and is researching for a fourth book.

Following extensive research into the activities of the ships of the Red Sea Patrol, it has become evident that without the work of those ships, the Arab Revolt would have failed and Lawrence would have remained an obscure officer in the military bureaucracy of Cairo. This paper looks at the work of the Royal Navy, largely unreported at the time for political reasons, using primary source material from the ships’ logs and other early sources. Lawrence was aware of the importance and relevance of the Royal Navy in their Red Sea operations and commented on it on many occasions. He reported in 1918 that “the naval side of the … operations, when the time comes to tell of it, will provide a most interesting case of the value of command of the sea …” Until now, nobody has investigated what was behind those comments. This paper uncovers a new angle on the Lawrence legend.

Sunday September 25

Group Captain John Alexander: “Aeroplanes and Arabs”: T. E. Lawrence as Proponent of Air Power and the British Way in Warfare

John Alexander is a Group Captain in the RAF Regiment, the successor to the RAF armoured car companies formed to help garrison Iraq following the 1921 Cairo Conference, in which Trenchard offered Lawrence a commission. A specialist in air/land integration and an Arabic speaker, he served in the Falkland Islands in 1982; on secondment to the Sultan of Oman; at Tabuk on the Hejaz Railway in the 1990/91 Gulf War; in Iraq from 2003 to 2005; and in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2011. He has conceptualised warfare in appointments in think-tanks at the RAF, Luftwaffe and the MOD. A graduate of Newcastle, the Open, Cambridge (as a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow) and Pakistan National Defence Universities, he was recently a Chief of the Air Staff Visiting Research Fellow at the Changing Character of War programme at Pembroke College, Oxford. He has published in the Royal United Services Institute Journal (based on his work on Taliban outreach), Air Power Review and Asian Affairs. T. E. Lawrence’s fame derived from the contrast between the warfare of the Arab Revolt and the attrition of the Western Front. His conception of guerrilla warfare influenced Basil Liddell Hart’s theory of the “Indirect Approach” and his cultural understanding is now a totem for contemporary counter-insurgents. Yet in the ever growing Lawrence literature there is little linking his concept of war-fare and his choice of Service for post-war enlistment. This paper uses archival research to argue that Lawrence and his colleagues employed a strikingly modern British “way in warfare”, using armoured cars, machine guns and aeroplanes to avoid Arab attrition and minimise British presence, and Britain’s economic and maritime strength to subsidise proxies and provide operational mobility. The paper concludes that this example of liberal militarism throws light on Lawrence’s subsequent support for air control in Iraq, and enlistment in the RAF.

Kerry Webber: Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence: Beyond Arabia

Kerry Webber is a British writer, photographer and designer who has spent many years travelling and working in the Middle East. He became interested in the Arab Revolt and the Palestine Campaigns of the First World War which inevitably brought him into contact with the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Intrigued by Lawrence’s claim that fellow officers could “each tell a like tale”, he began to explore those peripheral figures and decided to research the life of Stewart Newcombe, eventually publishing articles and giving lectures on his findings. In 2000 he joined the T. E. Lawrence Society and was elected to its Committee, sitting on its editorial panel under the chairmanship of the late Philip Kerrigan. Kerry also contributes biographies to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies. He now lives in Spain and his book on Newcombe will be published in 2016.

Colonel Newcombe of the Royal Engineers was already a legend in the deserts of Arabia before he was joined in Cairo during the early months of the First World War by a group of extraordinary specialists in Middle Eastern affairs. One member of this group was T. E. Lawrence. Newcombe’s story, like those of other unsung figures in the Anglo-Arabian theatre of war, has been eclipsed by the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia”, and has languished in the dusty recesses of regimental records, government files or in the words of Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence: Beyond Arabia explores the unique friendship between the two men, that began in a pre-war desert meeting south of Beersheba and endured for more than 20 years until Newcombe was at last able to describe Lawrence as being like a younger brother. At Lawrence’s funeral, history records Newcombe as representing the Arabian years as one of the six pall bearers; this paper shows how much more this relationship meant to both men.

Dr Neil Faulkner: Lawrence of Arabia’s War

Neil is an archaeologist and historian who works as a lecturer, writer, editor and broadcaster. He is co-director of the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project in Norfolk and the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan. Educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, he is a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and Editor of Military History Monthly. The author of countless magazine articles and academic papers, his books include: Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, AD 66-73; Rome: Empire of the Eagles; and A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics. Lawrence of Arabia’s War will be published by Yale University Press in Spring 2016.

Neil Faulkner was joint academic director of the decade-long Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan. The discovery and interpretation of the archaeological remains have transformed understanding of the war in the desert in 1916-18. Neil will address four of the key themes: 1). The way in which Lawrence’s character as a Romantic and an Orientalist equipped him to play a unique role in the Arab Revolt. 2) The rich interaction of tradition and modernity, symbolised by the camel and the train, during the war. 3) The seminal contribution of Lawrence and the Sherifian Arabs to the development of modern guerrilla warfare. 4) The way in which the evidence on the ground has confirmed the scale of the insurgency and the essential veracity of Lawrence’s account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Accompanied by an exhibition related to the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan

Dick Benson-Gyles: The Boy in the Mask

Dick Benson-Gyles was educated at Marlborough College and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. A professional editor and freelance writer, who has been writing for the Western Morning News for 25 years, he has also been an archaeologist in Iraq and TV documentary presenter. His new book, The Boy in the Mask: The Hidden World of Lawrence of Arabia, is due to be published in Spring 2016.

This presentation will explore Dick Benson-Gyles’ quest to uncover previously unexplained areas in the life of Lawrence. The talk will explore a personal mission to reveal the man behind the mask: the secret Lawrence. Lawrence’s lost Irish heritage will be explored - his father’s real family (the aristocratic, Anglo-Irish Chapmans), his abandoned half-sisters (with evocative interviews), his illegitimacy, and his mother’s obscure forebears. His concealment from his titled and wealthy Irish family affected Lawrence more deeply than thought. We will also have an insight into some of the mysteries and questions still remaining around Lawrence and his life. The presentation will be supported by a wide range of unseen family and documentary photographs, never before published.

Please note that this is a provisional programme and may be subject to change. 

Lawrence Symposium - Update on Speakers

The T.E. Lawrence Society have now published a provisional list of guest speakers for their 14th T.E. Lawrence Society Symposium to be held at St. John's College, Oxford, on 23-25 September 2016.

A special programme of lectures will mark the centenary of the start of the Arab Revolt: The planned line-up of speakers is as follows:

John Alexander - Lawrence as a Proponent of Air Power 

Professor Ali Allawi - Feisal and the Arab Revolt 

Philip Walker - Army Colleagues of Lawrence in the Arab Revolt 

Marilyn Holehouse - Lawrence's Family 

Dr. Neil Faulkner - Archaeology of the Arab Revolt 

John Johnson-Allen - T.E. Lawrence and the Red Sea Patrol 

Dr. David Murphy - Colonel Joyce and Lawrence 

Kerry Webber - Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence 

Roger Holehouse - Diplomatic Background to the Arab Revolt 

Professor Paul Nicholson - Images of Egypt Project

Accommodation for the two day event will be in the rooms of the historic Oxford college. A splendid formal dinner will be held in the Great Hall on the Saturday. To reserve your place - non-members welcome - contact Harriet Coates on hon.secretary@telsociety.org

The Lawrence Symposium, St. John's College, Oxford, 23-25 September 2016

Next year the T.E. Lawrence Society holds its 14th Society Symposium at St. John's College, Oxford. It is also the centenary anniversary for the Arab Revolt. In recognition of the role played by Stewart Newcombe in the campaign I have been invited as a guest speaker to discuss the fascinating relationship between Lawrence and Newcombe before, during and after the Revolt. 

Also speaking will be Professor Ali Alawi, from Iraq, to talk about King Feisal and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire. His recent book on Feisal is the first complete biography of the man and the monarch who was a central player in the Revolt and the development of the Middle East after the war. 

Philip Walker will share his research on the Service and Intelligence Colleagues of Lawrence with many new insights into the Arab Revolt. A past speaker at the 2012 Symposium, Philip has recently written a book on those officers who slipped below the radar of historians, and whose role in helping safeguard and shape the Arab Revolt deserves to be celebrated as its centenary year in 2016 approaches.

Another speaker, Dr. David Murphy, also a speaker from past symposia, will present Colonel Joyce and Lawrence. 

John Alexander, from the RAF, will speak on T.E. Lawrence as a Proponent of Air Power.

Dr. Neil Faulkner from the Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) military archaeological programme, which ended last year, will share the exciting discoveries and conclusions reached from many years' work on this project. 

With a few names still to be confirmed and announced it looks set to be a very interesting couple of days, with many new insights and research discoveries about Lawrence and his wartime activities and relationships. 

Members and non-members alike can attend the Symposium. If you wish to book a place contact the Society from their website at www.telsociety.org.uk 

Camping Deluxe

Lawrence and staff at Aqaba

AQABA 1917: 

Despite some discomforts, Lawrence and his colleagues set up quite decent camping arrangements whenever possible. With a Persian carpet at its hearth entrance this tent was equipped with beds and rudimentary washing facilities. The guy-lines of the tent were secured with pegs with the additional weight of a sand bag at each corner, evidence that the weather in the desert could whip up quite a strong wind. 

Lawrence’s tent also possessed a gramophone player which was put outside on a tall table during the regular gatherings with fellow British officers. A box of records kept the men entertained and one or two pets were introduced for added distraction. Major Scott, base commander at Aqaba, holds a terrier named "Robert". Captain Goslett strokes a saluki named "Shorter".

T.E. Lawrence and the Hejaz Postage Stamps 1916-1917

One piastre Hejaz stamp

Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary to the Arab Bureau, explained the thinking behind the simple but highly effective and visible means of proclaiming the independence of the Hejaz from the Ottoman Empire in 1916 in his memoir Orientations (1937):

“Shortly after the Arab Revolution we found that its success was being denied or blanketed by Enemy Press (which was of course quoted by neutrals), and we decided that the best proof that it had taken place would be provided by an issue of Hejaz postage stamps, which would carry the Arab propaganda, self-paying and incontrovertible, to the four corners of the earth.”

(Storrs, Ronald, Orientations, 1937)

Storrs, an aesthete with exquisite good taste, took Lawrence off to the Arab Museum in Cairo to collect suitable motifs “in order that the design in wording, spirit and ornament, might be as far as possible representative and reminiscent of a purely Arab source of inspiration. Pictures and views were avoided, for these never formed part of Arab decoration, and are foreign to its art; so also was European lettering.”

In this, their first joint endeavour, Lawrence and Storrs found agreement in the creative direction of the project and thereafter Lawrence was given a free hand in completing the design and production of the stamps to this format. The result was a series of arabesque designs taken from a number of sources which were worked up by two Cairo designers, Agami Effendi Ali and Mustafa Effendi Gozlan, and were soon put into production at the Survey of Egypt’s printing department located at Giza, some two miles from the Savoy Hotel in which G.H.Q. was housed. From the outset, Storrs was happy to let Lawrence – whom he called his ‘super cerebral companion’ - take over the running of the production, planning every detail from the design concept to print. As Storrs said:

"It was quickly apparent that Lawrence already possessed or had immediately assimilated a complete working technique of philatelic and three-color reproduction, so that he was able to supervise the issue from start to finish." 

In fact, Lawrence had long experience of liaising with government printers with his work on map reproduction at the War Office in London and for Military Intelligence in Cairo so he was perfectly suited to the task. He even had his own ideas, long held it seems, on what constituted good philatelic design and production. ‘It’s rather amusing,’ he wrote to his brother, Arnie, ‘because one has long had ideas as to what a stamp should look like, and now one can put them roughly into practice...I’m going to have flavoured gum on the back, so that one may lick without unpleasantness.’ This became a running joke and although it was never put into action he used to like to tell an apocryphal story that the Arabs enjoyed the flavours so much – strawberry essence for the red, pineapple for the green - that they would lick the gum clean away so that the stamps fell off the envelopes in the post and then postage could be charged double to make a very good profit for the Revolt. 

THE STAMPS 

  

The 1 piastre stamp in blue (shown above) depicts as a central motif the phrase ‘Makkah al-Mukarramah’ (Mecca the Blessed, or the Honoured), a phrase that is used whenever Mecca is mentioned, and above are the words ‘Hejaz Post’ in a lozenge which is mirrored below showing the price as ‘1 piastre’. The date of 1334 in two side panels corresponds to the launch of the Arab Revolt according to the Arabic calendar which differed slightly to the Ottoman one. The design elements were taken from an ancient prayer niche in the al-Amri mosque at Qus in Upper Egypt. Lawrence was particularly pleased with the design of this stamp as he said it was pure Arabic in style while the quarter-piastre in green (shown below) was Egyptian and showed the carved door panels of the al-Salih Tala'i mosque on Shari’ Qasabet Radwan in Cairo. He thought the half-piastre in red looked Chinese although its central design was taken from a page of a Holy Quran in the 14^th Century mosque of Sultan Al-Malik Az-Zahir Sayf ad-Din Barquq on Shari' al-Nahhasin in Cairo.

More postage stamps followed (6 in total) plus a set of three tax stamps but by then Lawrence had changed from being ‘Lawrence of Carchemish, of Cairo - of any place for a little while - and became permanently Lawrence of Arabia,’ as Storrs so accurately described the transformation.

Quarter-piastre Hejaz stamp

Lawrence’s connection to the Hejaz stamps issue of 1916-1917 was acknowledged by  Mr. (later Sir) Ernest Dowson, Surveyor-General of Egypt, in a coded reference in the introduction to a booklet entitled A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz. 

‘It is desired to take this opportunity to express the obligation due to all those who gave assistance or counsel, in particular to El Emir ‘Awrunis of the Northern Armies of His Highness the King of the Hejaz, at whose suggestion the work was undertaken, and to whose critical acumen the success met with must largely be ascribed.’   

30 Brechin Place

Newcombe's place of residence after retirement

Newcombe and retirement

On his retirement from the army in 1932 Stewart Newcombe and his wife, Elsie, moved to London and took up residence at 30 Brechin Place, South Kensington, an imposing four-storied terraced townhouse with additional attic rooms and basement. He soon settled into his new life away from the regiment and found time to renew his connections with old friends and colleagues at society meetings and clubs. At 53-years old he took on a civilian job, perhaps the first and only in his life, with Turner and Newall, a company specialising in asbestos products. His continuing interest in developing sustainable heat and energy for domestic housing made T&N a perfect vehicle for expanding his theories and would help in formulating some of his untried ideas on the subject of heat retention within the home.  The asbestos industry would later became mired in litigation and controversy but at the time was thought of as no more dangerous than many other industries such as coalmining or in the manufacture of steel. Lawrence took advantage of Newcombe’s connection to order some of their products to modernise his Dorset cottage, Clouds Hill,  but even he was aware of the inherent dangers of asbestos and referred to it as that ‘beastly stuff’.    

Lawrence – Final RAF duties

As Lawrence’s time in the RAF wound down he was worked hard – or more likely worked himself hard – right up until the end. For a couple of weeks he had been overseeing the assembly of a new batch of 100 h.p. power engines destined for RAF target boats at Henry Meadows Ltd, in Wolverhampton, but could be found at any number of locations that needed his presence. After residing briefly as Henry Meadows’ guest at Windermere House, he informed Newcombe that he had been forced to take up a bug infested accommodation as Wolverhampton seemed pretty full.

Windermere House

Lawrence was deeply unimpressed by Wolverhampton calling it ‘squalid’ and a ‘cess-pit’, adding that it had ‘the worse mannered local press of my experience!’ Coming from a press-hounded man like Lawrence it must have been particularly bad, so much so that he claims to have punched an editor in the mouth. He said that it had been the first time he had done so in his life; it would not be the last.

A lull in the manufacture at Meadows’ Fallings Park factory meant more meetings with the Air Council in London or back to Southampton for further fine-tuning at Scott-Paine’s power boat yard. “Since Wolverhampton,” he wrote, “I have been to London, Nottingham and Oxford; London; Plymouth; and London again.” At some point during this time, perhaps on 16 February when Lawrence’s meeting with the Secretary of the Air Ministry, Sir Christopher Bullock, was cancelled, he spent a day with the Newcombes at Brechin Place in London. A few weeks later Liddell Hart sent Newcombe an inscribed copy of his biography ‘T.E. Lawrence’ In Arabia and After and received the following letter describing the meeting:

2 March 1934

Dear Liddell Hart, It was extraordinarily kind of you to send me the book and also to insert a very flattering inscription. Naturally it has given my wife and me very great pleasure and very many thanks. T.E. was here about three weeks ago from 10 am till 6: as bright as ever.

Yours very sincerely
Stewart F. Newcombe

A rare moment of quietude

It must have been a rare treat for Lawrence to spend a whole day with Newcombe and Elsie instead of his usual nomadic existence in lodgings with snatched meals and working day and night on double shifts, ‘oiled up to the teeth,’ as he put it, ‘fed up to the teeth: and very unpopular.’ 

30 Brechin Place, now painted red

Today the Brechin Place house is painted in a cardinal red finish - too jarring for my tastes - one of only two in a typical street of London brick facades. When I last visited Kensington the house still seemed to reverberate with conversations both serious and jocular that took place within its walls eighty years ago between two old desert warriors and a brave woman that helped one of them escape under the very noses of his Turkish captors!

I would like to thank John Meadows for placing the history of his grandfather's factory online at Henry Meadows Ltd.

 

ON THIS DAY - 19 May 1935

T.E. LAWRENCE (16 August 1888 - 19 May 1935)

And how beguile you? Death has no repose
Warmer and deeper than the Orient sand
Which hides the beauty and bright faith of those
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

JAMES ELROY FLECKER

Eighty years ago today the archaeologist, soldier and writer, Thomas Edward Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, died following a motorcycle accident on a quiet Dorset lane close to his cottage, Clouds Hill.

END OF SERVICE

Brough Superior 1927, Reg RK 4907

T.E. Lawrence took his discharge from the R.A.F. on Monday 25 February 1935 in front of his Commanding Officer, Pilot-Officer J.F. Manning, who later became Air Commodore Manning. During the day, Lawrence wrote to Trenchard’s successor, the then current Air Chief Marshall, Sir Edward Ellington, giving his thanks for the forbearance he had shown in allowing him to complete his twelve year service. It was of course unusual for a humble airman to contact his Chief in this way and the moment was not lost on Lawrence:

‘Not many airmen, fortunately, write to their Chief of Staff upon discharge,’ he wrote, adding, ‘I’ve been at home in the ranks, and well and happy...So if you still keep that old file about me, will you please close it with this note which says how sadly I am going? The R.A.F. has been much more than my profession’. 

The next morning, Manning and a few colleagues, military and civilian, gathered at Bridlington harbour-side to see Lawrence off. He was wearing his familiar civvies of sports jacket and flannel trousers which were held in place at the ankles by bicycle clips. He had knotted a checked scarf at his neck and had tucked the ends into the front of his jacket. It was a crisp sunny Tuesday and he had a plan to cycle south to his old R.A.F. college at Cranwell and then onto Bourne in Lincolnshire to meet Frederick Manning, an Australian author Lawrence admired. Cambridge was also on his route where he could visit an old friend, Sydney Cockerell, Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and where his brother Arnie lived with his wife Mary with their eight year old daughter, Jane. And then to Dorset and his cottage, Clouds Hill. It would be a long journey over a few days and he was keen to be on his way, partly to start eating up the distance, but mostly to face the dreaded moment that would severe him from the service that had been his home and refuge for the past twelve years. 

Unbeknown to him he was heading for a conflict with press reporters and photographers keen to discover his future intentions. His hoped-for sanctuary was about to be shattered. 

When he eventually reached Clouds Hill, he found the place besieged by the ‘press hounds’, as he called them. He immediately escaped to London and found lodgings in Waterloo, South London, under the not-very original name of T.E. Smith. After writing to Churchill to call in a favour he enlisted the help of Esmond Harmsworth, Chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors Association, to help persuade the press people to leave him alone. ‘If they agree to that,’ he wrote to Winstone, ‘the free-lancers find no market for their activities.’ 

Clouds Hill - An earthly paradise

A BRIEF TASTE OF LEISURE

It took a couple of weeks before his plea to be left alone was actioned but by the evening of 26 March he was back at Clouds Hill, now peaceful and deserted except for his solitary neighbour, Pat Knowles. This is where his books were, twelve hundred of them, each read at least once and worth reading again, and a gramophone to play music on. At last, perhaps this could be his refuge, a sanctuary from fame. 

The finishing touches to the refurbishment of his cottage kept him almost totally absorbed in its planning and execution over the coming weeks but he admitted to friends that he still needed time to heal the physical and emotional exhaustion he felt after his demanding role in the RAF, the wrench of its termination and his recent confrontations with the press. With those latter troubles now successfully dealt with following his approach to Churchill and Harmsworth he replied to Lady Astor on 8 May turning down an invitation to Cliveden during which she believed the reorganisation of the national Defence Forces would be offered to him by influential fellow guests that included Lionel Curtis and Stanley Baldwin: 

‘No wild mares would not at present take me away from Clouds Hill,’ he wrote. ‘It is an earthly paradise and I am staying here till I feel qualified for it. Also there’s something broken in the works as I told you: my will I think.’ 

He continued to write to his wide circle of correspondents, a mixture of bleak resignation regarding his situation and upbeat delight in his surroundings and in those simple tasks that went towards creating his own idiosyncratic home – a one man home he called it. Projects for the future were stored away until leisure time allowed them to be given the attention they deserved. Not that Lawrence did not feel slightly adrift in his new found circumstances, as this letter to the artist Eric Kennington illustrates:  

‘You wonder what I am doing? Well, so do I, in truth. Days seem to dawn, suns to shine, evenings to follow, and then I sleep. What I have done, what I am doing, what I am going to do, puzzle and bewilder me. Have you ever been a leaf and fallen from your tree in autumn and been really puzzled about it? That's the feeling.’

(TEL to Eric Kennington, 6 May 1935)  

13 MAY 1935

Then just as abruptly as retirement had interrupted a life once so full of action, and without sufficient time to enjoy his new-found leisure, he was thrown over the handlebars of his powerful Brough motorcycle on Monday 13 May whilst trying to avoid two errand boys on bicycles who were approaching him out of a dip in the road close to his cottage. Lawrence lingered in that place between life and death for six days before finally surrendering his fragile hold on life and he died on Sunday 19 May 1935, one last ‘Sunday that goes on and on,’ as his friend the poet James Elroy Flecker had written. He had experienced true leisure for less than twelve weeks.

Lawrence's friend Sir Ronald Storrs, one-time Oriental Secretary in Cairo and Military Governor of Jerusalem, was with him on the 21 May when they prepared him for his burial. His eloquent description of those final moments is worth recounting: 

‘I stood beside him lying swathed in fleecy wool; stayed until the plain oak coffin was screwed down. There was nothing else in the mortuary chamber but a little altar behind his head with some lilies of the valley and red roses. I had come prepared to be greatly shocked by what I saw, but his injuries had been at the back of his head, and beyond some scarring and discoloration over the left eye, his countenance was not marred. His nose was sharper and delicately curved, and his chin less square... Nothing of his hair, nor of his hands was showing; only a powerful cowled mask, dark-stained ivory alive against the dead chemical sterility of the wrappings. It was somehow unreal to be watching beside him in these cerements, so strangely resembling the aba, the kuffiya and the aqál of an Arab Chief, as he lay in his last littlest room, very grave and strong and noble... As we carried the coffin into and out of the little church the clicking Kodaks and the whirring reels extracted from the dead body their last “personal” publicity.’  

(P. 531 Orientations, Storrs) 

THE JOLLIEST THING ON WHEELS 

Lawrence wrote a long letter to Robert Graves (28.6.27) in which he corrected passages of Graves’ draft biography of Lawrence and offered information to help the fledgling writer complete the project. In it he stated his love for his Brough motorbike, the aptly named Boanerges, or ‘Sons of Thunder’, which he described as ‘the jolliest things on wheels’. In doing so he provided his own epitaph, explaining his craving for speed and boasting of not harming anyone else in its pursuit:  

‘Put in a good word for Boanerges, my Brough bike,’ he wrote. ‘I had five of them in four years, and rode 100,000 miles on them, making only two insurance claims (for superficial damage to machine after skids), and hurting nobody. The greatest pleasure of my recent life has been speed on the road. The bike would do 100 m.p.h. but I'm not a racing man. It was my satisfaction to purr along gently between 60 and 70 m.p.h. and drink in the air and the general view. I lose detail at even moderate speeds, but gain comprehension. When I used to cross Salisbury Plain at 50 or so, I'd feel the earth moulding herself under me. It was me piling up this hill, hollowing this valley, stretching out this level place: almost the earth came alive, heaving and tossing on each side like a sea. That's a thing the slow coach will never feel. It is the reward of Speed. I could write for hours on the lustfulness of moving swiftly.’ 

It was a fitting epitaph that aptly described the instrument and the manner of his passing.   

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond the last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand. 

FLECKER