T. E. Lawrence: The Myth and the Message

Abstract

If fame be judged by numbers of biographies, then T. E. Lawrence is the most famous Briton of the twentieth century. Over thirty biographies of him have been published, and more flooded from the presses for the centenary of his birth. Few reputations have swung so wildly from hero-worship to notoriety; few personalities have so successfully eluded definition. But through it all Lawrence continues to exercise an extraordinary hold on the imaginations of Britons in the twentieth century. John Buchan wrote that he ‘could have followed Lawrence over the edge of the world’.¹ He intrigued figures as diverse as George Bernard Shaw (not to mention Charlotte Shaw), E. M. Forster, Winston Churchill and Robert Graves, while Michael Foot, not long before becoming leader of the Labour Party, wrote, ‘My guess is that The Mint will help to restore the reputation of the Seven Pillars, which in turn will restore the reputation of Lawrence.’² Sure enough, a television documentary in 1986, repeated in 1988, largely re-created the atmosphere of uncritical adulation.³