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Most people have an image of Lawrence of Arabia, atop a camel, crossing the desert dunes but he was as much at home in the green hills of England – if, in fact, he ever called anywhere home. Lawrence was an enigmatic eccentric and it’s not clear whether he spent his life running to, or running away from things.
He was born Thomas Edward Lawrence in Wales in 1888. His father was Sir Thomas Chapman who abandoned his first wife and daughters in Ireland and ran away to Wales with the children’s governess. The couple could never marry because his wife refused to divorce him. They assumed the names of ‘Mr and Mrs Lawrence’ and had five children - T.E. was the second.
Lawrence studied Middle Eastern history at Oxford University and travelled there many times between 1909 and 1914. With the outbreak of WWI he was given an army posting in Cairo because of his knowledge of Arabic and the Arab people. During the war he led a brilliant military offensive against the Turks to capture Aqabar. He later refused military honours because he was disgusted how the British and French carved up the Arab territory after they had defeated the Turks. However, he became known as ‘El Aurens’ to the Arabs, a Robin Hood of the desert leading the oppressed to freedom and independence. To the rest of the world he was just Lawrence of Arabia, something he spent most of the rest of his life trying to escape.
After the war, Lawrence worked for a while under Winston Churchill in the Colonial Office then, in 1922, enlisted in the armed forces under the assumed name of John Ross.
It was around this time that his monumental work, Seven Pillars of Wisdom
was published and the ensuing publicity exposed his alias. A year or so
later he changed his name to T.E. Shaw (possibly choosing the name because
of his friendship with an ageing George Bernard Shaw). During this time
he was stationed at Bovington Camp in Dorset and bought the tiny nearby
cottage called Clouds Hill. In 1925 he transferred to the RAF and spent
the next ten years working on aircraft and seaplanes in various parts
of England and India. He was discharged in 1935, aged 46, and retired
to Clouds Hill. Ten weeks later he crashed his motorcycle near Clouds
Hill and died in Bovington Military Hospital six days later. He is buried
in St Nicholas Church Cemetery in Moreton.
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