Childhood: As a child he was called Ned. He was the second of five illegitimate sons to Robert Chapman and Sarah Lawrence. Robert Chapman was an Anglo-Irish landlord. Sarah Lawrence's father was an engineer from Durham. Ned was brought up mainly in Oxford but during his childhood the family moved around to Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Brittany, before settling in Oxford. The sons were regularly beaten by Sarah Lawrence, especially Ned.

Education: Lawrence was educated at Oxford High School, and then Jesus College, Oxford.

Work: On 1st. November 1914 the Ottoman Empire declared war on Great Britain. From this Britain hoped to seize Turkey from the Arab world, with its oil, and the land passage to India. Lawrence applied to work with the General Staff in Egypt and worked at an office job. However he was sent to negotiate with the Arab leaders and became the only British officer on the Arab front. From this position he could write his dispatches back to British Army headquarters without fear of contradiction. He became advisor to Faisal I at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 and a member of the Middle East Department at the Colonial Office in 1921.
Lawrences's Seven Pillars of Wisdom recounts his exploits in the Middle East. It went through three major drafts, the first apparently being lost on Reading Station in 1919. He sought literary advice from E. M. Forster. After the manuscript had been carefully read and edited by George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte it came out in a very limited edition in 1926, with illustrations by Eric Kennington.. It became a classic of war literature and he achieved some fame because of it. It was later seen to be less than entirely reliable in the accuracy of some of its details.
He was offered but refused the Victoria Cross and a Knighthood. He was awarded a fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford in 1919.
To escape public attention Lawrence enlisted in the ranks of the RAF in 1922 as John Hume Ross. This was discovered and he was discharged. He then joined Royal Tank Corps in 1923 as T. E. Shaw, and he joined the RAF again in 1925. He adopted the name T. E. Shaw by deed poll in 1927.
He retired in 1935 and died in the same year as a result of a motor-cycling accident at Clouds Hill. He was buried near Clouds Hill at Moreton, near Dorchester. On 18th. June, 1935 tributes were paid to T. E. Lawrence at a Foyles literary luncheon at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, London. It was presided over by Lord Lloyd and Herbert Samuel. The speakers were Liddell Hart and Ronald Storrs
W. H. Auden based his The Ascent of F6 in part on the legend of T. E. Lawrence.
T. E. Lawrence also inspired the character Private Meek in George Bernard Shaw's Too True to be Good, (1932). He was also the subject of Terence Rattigan's play Ross, (1962). A film of his life was also made, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, directed by David Lean, produced by Sam Spiegel, screenplay by Robert Bolt. Ranked at 3rd. position among 'British' films by the British Film Institute survey in 1999.
"The whole story, and certainly Lawrence, was very, if not entirely, gay. We thought we were being very daring at the time. Lawrence and Omar, Lawrence and the Arab boys." David Lean

Friends & Relationships: From 1911 to 1914 he joined the archeological digs of Hittite settlements under the direction of Flinders Petrie at Carchemish on the banks of the Euphrates river. Here T. E. Lawrence fell in love with the 15-year-old Arab peasant boy, Salim Ahmed, whom he called Dahoum. He brought him on holiday to England. T. E. Lawrence and Dahoum were inseparable until Dahoum disappeared in 1916. He was rediscovered in 1918 when he was found dying of typhoid. While he was living at his cottage at Clouds Hill in Dorset he had other authors to stay including George Bernard Shaw, E. M. Forster, and Robert Graves. Siegfried Sassoon also visited T. E. Lawrence at Clouds Hill. T. E. Lawrence's sexuality has been a matter of debate. T. E. Lawrence lived in times when men did not talk about their sexuality, particularly if they were soldiers. However, the closeness of his relationship with Dahoum from 1911 to 1916 attracted attention at the time. The BBC radio play Castle of the Star, (1992), most explicitly presented this love. The film suggests he was buggered by a sadistic Turk and that he had a masochisitic streak.

Greatest Achievement: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the exploits described therein.

Email this Article to a Friend