Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theatre. He is also the bestselling author of titles such as Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, and the biography Captain Scott. With the new photos, Thomas re-launched his show under the new title With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia in early 1920, which proved to be extremely popular. Crucial to the Zionist effort was broadening its appeal to western policymakers, prominent among whom was a breed of well-heeled British romantics who floated around the Middle East offering solutions of breathtaking (and often contradictory) simplicity to problems that even now are considered intractable.

Review: September 4, 1955, The Desert and the Stars, “To Glory and Back,” Selden Rodman, New York Times. Over the next four years of commemoration, as our opinions of the first world war alter subtly under the influence of new facts, one reputation seems unassailable. Journeying more than 300 miles through blistering heat to capture Aqaba, to his involvement in peace conferences that decided the future of the Middle East.

With detailed access to records and an in-depth knowledge, Lawrence of Arabia is at long last a true and full account of this mysterious adventurer who captivated the world. In his new book, Scott Anderson expands and contextualises the familiar Lawrence story – as his title, Lawrence in Arabia, suggests.

During this time, he published his best-known work Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), an autobiographical account of his participation in the Arab Revolt.His vision of the Middle East was, however, narrowed by the usual ethnic blinkers (cowardly Arabs, docile Jews), and he ended the war scheming irrelevantly. If you thought you knew all you needed to know about "Lawrence of Arabia", if only thanks to David Lean's epic film, think again. He travelled to the Middle East on multiple occasions during this period, at one time holding the title of "chief political officer for Trans-Jordania". The son of the Governor resident in Dera'a at the time has been quoted as saying the narrative must be false, because Lawrence describes the Bey's hair, while in fact his father was bald. And there was even an American, William Yale – and, yes, the name comes from the family that founded the university – an oilman and spy working first for Middle Eastern interests of the Standard Oil of New York, but later for the US State Department.