Seven Pillars of Wisdom

"Someone once asked me, if a fire burnt down my house what would be the one thing I would walk out with? And it’s a first-edition, leather-bound copy of this incredible book signed by my grandfather. My grandfather was himself a surgeon at a casualty clearing station on the Western Front. I think that the myth of Lawrence of Arabia has sort of overwhelmed the power of his prose. Famously he came back from the war and set himself the task of writing his memoir and he wrote 240,000 words and then left the manuscript on a train. He then went back and in this fever pitch rewrote the entire book from memory. Never has there been a more important and serendipitous editorial intrusion from God than at that moment, because the book he ended up writing is so intense and so powerful. But what I find fascinating was this desperate desire to create a hero in a war that had vanquished the entire mention of heroism. So when the British locked on Lawrence, as indeed Churchill and others did, as this romantic figure, I think it really disturbed Lawrence. Seven Pillars of Wisdom has one of the best opening lines in English literature: “Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.” He then goes on in the three or four subsequent paragraphs to basically say to the British public that if you want to make me a hero you’re going to have to deal with all of my perversities, all of my obsessions, all of my complexities. Then he goes on to write this incredible account. It’s an account of the desert campaign. Originally Lawrence was a young archaeologist who travelled in the region before the war and wrote his thesis on the Crusader castles in the Middle East. Without doubt, all that time he was cooperating with the British Foreign Office. His journeys through what are now Jordan and Syria were also scouting the preparedness of the Ottoman Empire, particularly the railroad to Medina, which cut through the Middle East. He was then on the staff in Cairo, basically engaged in a clerk’s role creating maps, when the opportunity arose to actually spark the Arab Revolt which caused probably less difficulties to the Ottoman regime than the [David Lean] movie [ Lawrence of Arabia ] would imply, but nevertheless was a very powerful guerrilla action that led to the capture of Aqaba, and eventually the Arab armies joining, essentially as cavalry, the British as they move towards Damascus under [General] Allenby. The book itself is a straightforward account of those engagements, but he was a beautiful writer and he was writing about a period of history in a way that today feels wildly evocative. Absolutely. We forget that every challenge we face in the Middle East today can be traced in direct lineage to the decisions made in the wake of the war to suddenly create these kingdoms and anoint these various princes and create these entities that we call countries. All of this comes out of the crucible of the war and so to read Lawrence’s account of his time in Arabia pre-modernisation, pre-oil in effect, is really to open a door on a period of history that seems impossibly distant and yet, of course, it was still there at the time of our grandfathers."

"Yes, it’s a book about Lawrence’s experiences during World War I , when he was stationed in North African and the Middle East. He writes about some of the lessons that he learnt from the military leaders from the Allies, and the Bedouin and tribal leaders. The book was influential to me because I can see his contribution as an Arabist. Yes, so while I was learning Arabic I started to read about these people who were called Arabists (Lawrence was one of them), and found out what motivated them to learn this fascinating language and how they bring that ability to bear in a military situation. And you can see that not only Lawrence’s ability to speak the language, but also the way he could build relationships through his linguistic skills was so important. It’s not enough just to speak the language. You need to be able to understand what the other people are saying, not only with their spoken words, but also with their interests. Someone who can speak languages like T E Lawrence can also put themselves in other people’s shoes. I’m not saying that’s the case with all linguists, but it certainly was with Lawrence. He was a great negotiator and alliance builder and that’s really inspiring."