T.E. Lawrence

Lawrence of Arabia is viewed as a man of great talents, performing striking feats of bravery, leadership, and will-and also as a masochist, who hated and despised himself. This biography comes closer than any other to explaining why Lawrence forsook public life and a colonels rank for the life of a private in the Royal Air Force. This balanced study of a man whose character and achievements have been much debated is based on a review of virtually every published and unpublished English source in British and U. S. libraries and archives, including the important archive of Lawrences letters and papers in the Bodleian Library. Part I discusses Lawrences life in a conventional chronological sequence. Part II is devoted to enduring themes: his living and spending habits; his relations with family members and friends; and the elements of genius and madness, honesty and evasiveness, vanity and humility, and masochism, in his nature.