T. E. Lawrence
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T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer and writer, born in Tremadog, Wales, and raised in Oxford. After studying history at Oxford, where he wrote a thesis on Crusader castles, he worked on the excavations at Carchemish in Syria. In the First World War he served as an intelligence officer in Cairo and from 1916 as British liaison to the Emir Feisal in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, taking part in the capture of Aqaba and the advance on Damascus. Celebrated after the war as “Lawrence of Arabia”, he argued for Arab independence at the Paris Peace Conference and briefly advised Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office. Then, seeking anonymity, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force and the Tank Corps under assumed names, eventually as T. E. Shaw. Besides Seven Pillars of Wisdom he wrote The Mint and translated the Odyssey. He died in 1935 after a motorcycle accident in Dorset.
