Lawrence, T(homas) E(dward), known as Lawrence of Arabia 1888-1935
Anglo-Irish soldier and writer

Born in Tremadoc, Caernarvonshire, North Wales, he was brought up in Oxford. He joined the archaeological team under Sir Flinders Petrie at Carchemish, on the Euphrates (1911-14), where he first met the Bedouins. In World War I he worked for army intelligence in North Africa (1914-16). In 1916 he was British liaison officer to the Arab revolt against the Turks led by Faisal I, the son of Hussein ibn Ali. He co-operated with General Allenby's triumphal advance and entered Damascus in October 1918. He was an adviser to Faisal at the Paris Peace Conference and a member of the Middle East Department at the Colonial Office (1921). His account of the Arab Revolt, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, abridged by himself as Revolt in the Desert, became one of the classics of war literature. To escape his subsequent fame he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF (1922) as J H Ross, in the Royal Tank Corps (1923) as T E Shaw, and again in the RAF in 1925. He retired in 1935, and was killed that year in a motor-cycling accident in Dorset.

Bibliography: Basil H Liddell Hart, T E Lawrence, in Arabia and After (1934)