Empire: World History - 39. Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab Revolt

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Often understood through Peter O’Toole’s iconic display, who really was Lawrence of Arabia? His role in the First World War and the Arab Revolt had a defining effect on the Middle-East. Listen as William and Anita are joined by Anthony Sattin to discuss his life. LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/empirepod. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Goalhangerpodcasts.com Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. And welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Durhampton. I can see the thought. And me. Anthony's added.

Well, you're not even announced yet. You just be quiet. I know you well enough to see that look. Well, you go, shall I do it? Shall I tip her over at the beginning of this one? And you almost did. Anyway. It never failed.

I know. It really does. And also, can I just ask all of you who are on Twitter having a campaign to bring back the pause? You're not helping my mental health, any of you. So anyway, we're here again. And listen, we've got a very special guest who also, like William, doesn't understand about the dramatic buildup. Just wait until you're properly introduced. It's like having two children.

These are like two very good friends. coming. Listen, on the previous podcast, we have been, this is part of, if you're just joining us for this one off, it's not normally this chaotic, I promise. There's normally more order to these podcasts, but we are talking about the Ottoman Empire. We have taken you from its inception to the rise through Suleiman the Great. We've taken you through to the young Turks arriving. Yes, coffee. And also, we're sort of coming to the tipping point and the decline of the whole empire. And we thought, William, it would be good to look at that decline through a really interesting, kind of ubiquitous, at least in Britain, prison. We are doing it through the life of Lawrence of Arabia.

And I think most people who have encountered Lawrence of basically encountered Peter O'Toole. It's the movie. Pretty, pretty Peter O'Toole, yeah. One of the great movies. In fact, I watched it in Egypt over Christmas. So I am very jinned up on what the movies, but I'm quite keen to talk to our guest. Who is just not going to say. stay quiet for a moment longer.

The sooner we introduce them the better. Go on then. It is actually the rather marvelous Anthony Satin, who is a very old friend of yours, it's true to say. Old friend I met. Well, young, young, long friend. 30 years ago, really.

Yes. Well, and you have done this beautiful book with a really fetching cover, I have to say. Young Lawrence, and it's got a picture. It could be O'Toole. It could be one of these smudgy pictures from an O'Toole poster, film poster. Except that Lawrence was actually

much shorter than O'T know, right? Yes. I know. Yeah, exactly. How tall was he? He was short. Well, we don't know exactly how short he was, but he was between 5 foot 2 and 5 foot 4. Because there are several medical records. I'm tall of you. I'm five foot two. I'm not even between. He's your size. I'm just so shocked. He's fun size. He's not even a real old person. I just can't understand this. I can't compute it.

You could have looked at each other in the height. It could have been something. He's a bit old. He's a bit old for you. A bit dead for me, to be honest, Anthony. I don't think I'm necessarily his type, and we'll get to that in a minute. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Let's start a rush forward. But can I just tell you a really interesting fact about the O'Toole film version? Because he became so much identified with Lawrence. So there are some things that they did right.

So he was this creature with a shock of very blonde hair. That is correct. He had piercing blue eyes. That is correct. He was half the size of Peter O'Toole. That's correct. But when Peter O'Toole was making the film, do you know what his nickname was on set? Tell me.

Florence of Arabia. Because he was so appalling to all the cast and crew. They found him really, really flouncy and awful. They called him Florence of Arabian. Thought I'd throw that in. Right, back to reality, though. So where was Lawrence of Arabia? He wasn't always of Arabia.

He was Lawrence of where, to begin with? Well, he was born in Wales. Lawrence of Traumatic. And then he became Lawrence of Oxford, which is where he was brought up. Anita's convinced that she went to school with him. No, I just, I had a discussion. that whatever that case was in my school was a big lie. It was an absolute lie.

They used to claim him. They claimed him in a glass cabinet, so he went to this school, and it was a ragged school boy in the east end of London. No, he did. The hell it was. He went to Oxford High School. Yeah, yeah. It was a big, big lie.

But his actual origin story, if I sort of use the Marvel comic nomenclature of this, it's complicated. It's not clean. Tell us about his background. No, I mean, the name wasn't Lawrence for a start. And he didn't discover this as a fact until after the war. But he has a sense, and he's one of five children, four other brothers. But he's the only one who has a sense.

There's something weird about his parents' relationship. And what's weird about it is that, A, they're not called Lawrence, and B, his parents are not married, which at the beginning of the 20th century was quite a big thing. So his father was an Irish baronet by the name of Chapman, who ran off with the governess, got her pregnant. And then did the indecent thing of leaving his wife and daughters. but his wife was a Catholic and wouldn't divorce him.

So they live in sin. They live in sin. And is this a big scandal at the time? Do people know? Or has he by moving to Oxford? And does he have money off his own? He's got money, yes. He's left the estate and most of the fortune to his wife.

Right. But he's got enough never to have to work. So he sort of lives this sort of comfortable middle class life as though he was a lawyer or something like that. And they move around. So his eldest brother was born, elder brother was born in Dublin. And he's the second one, born in Wales, and the third one's born in Normandy, or Brittany. And then the next one is brought in the Channel Islands, and the last one in the New Forest.

And then when it's school time, they decide to go to Oxford. And I think because they can, they feel they can live anonymously in Oxford. There's no social life. There's no family, you know, family backstory. There's no, you know, the wee Lawrence's come from wherever it is. But after the war, old man Lawrence dies of the Spanish flu in 1919 and leaves this less. heart-rending letter to says, you know, oh, my sons, if only I had known, you know, there could never be a divorce. I've lived with this secret all my life and this awful, awful sort of

weight that... But they only find out when he dies? When he dies, he leaves a letter to be opened after his death. But with this sort of unusual background, albeit he doesn't know how unusual it is, is it true to say that as a child, he was a bit weird? Yeah, yeah, but as I said, he's the only one of these five kids who feels there's something weird about his parents. And it really weighs on him. So he's convinced that his mother is his mother, but his father is not. And that this man has stepped in to do the decent thing, you know, to sort of protect this woman. So, and he has a very, very complex relationship with his mother who, of all the kids, she beats him quite savagely at times and punishes him a lot.

And also he's literally the run to the litter, although he's the second of five, because he's small. And the others are not that small. You know, there's something weird about him. He's very, very bright and he's very dedicated to building up his body. He goes on, first of all, long walks and then when he gets a bicycle, long bike rides. And by long, I mean, he cycles down to the south of France. Oh, wow. And back.

I mean, he does long. And then, crucially, he decides to go and see Crusader castles. Crucially, yes, his second year at Oxford where he's studying medieval history, he decides to go and look for the origin of, well, various elements of Crusader Carls. He becomes obsessed with machiculation, which is the bit that hangs above the gate of a castle where you can pour boiling oil down onto the people trying to batter your door. It's quite niche. It's very niche.

And on the year that the summer holiday at the end of his first year at Oxford, he'd cycle down the whole way around France looking at castles. And then in his second summer, he decides to walk around the Middle East. I actually did the same. I did it in my first summer at Cambridge, I went off and followed the Root of the Crusade. You're much taller than him. You're taller, but you are as old. I mean, that's probably fair to say.

And I arrived in Damascus, and I was staying with some friends of friends in Damascus. And someone gave me this book of Lawrence's Crusader Carst. Crusader Carst is, which is his... So you didn't know why you were doing it, that you were following his footsteps. Which was his thesis, yeah, for which he received a first. So he got a first. He's acknowledged as a brain. He has this niche interest in a particular bit of Crusader castles.

Okay. So what is to become of such a man? Well, no, he's even weird than that because he'd actually been collecting shards of pots and bits of broken glass. They were digging up roads in Oxford. They were doing a lot of construction when he was growing up. And he paid the workmen to give him whatever little bits they dug. And he reconstructed medieval pots and Elizabeth. and bottles and things and he became the youngest ever donor to the Ashmalion Museum and then he helped

them reorder age 16 or whatever their collection of medieval stuff wow i mean he was a complete nutter but i think he's rather lovely though but kind of charming nutter yes actually you've always like that kind of letter that's why we're friends uh just saying okay so and crucially crucially he of the five kids is the one who tells stories at night right when they're all little And the stories he tells are always Arthurian legends. They're stories of knights doing noble things, saving young ladies, storming cars. So he's romantic. He's got a deeply romantic soul.

Yes. But he's not a romantic person at this time. And he's not sort of, you know, a hit with the ladies. That's not his thing at all, is it? That's not his thing at all. No, he's a, he's a loner at this point. One of the things that you've said in your book that was, I had read it says I always assumed he was gay. And you say he wasn't.

He was basically asexual. I have found no dirty sheets. And believe me, I've looked. Even the people who, even someone who wrote thinking it was rather odd that he'd spent a summer locked up with a young man in the Ottoman Empire, then quickly backtracked saying, I'm not suggesting anything improper happened. But he did carve an image of a naked man. Did he?

Well, we've all done that. The thing is, say, let's not leap forward. So here he is, okay, he's doing something interesting. What date is he looking at these meticulations? In 1908. And then what happens? So he's got a now a relationship with the Ashmonian. The Ashmonian is going to be a real pivot point in his life, transformative.

What happens? Yes, there's a man called Hogarth, D.G. Hogarth, who's such a shady character. I mean, he had been an archaeologist and then a journalist. He didn't have money. He didn't inherit money. So he'd had to make it. And he went, you know, he was a very popular public speaker. And then he became director of the Ashmolean in Oxford.

And he sort of becomes Lawrence's surrogate father. and looks after him. So he helps him into Oxford, because he entered the university, because he knew him beforehand, and suggests that he might go and look at Crusader castles in France, and then arranges the,

helps him arrange the big walk he makes around the Middle East in his second year. Now, you say shady. Is that because you think he might be a feeder school for spooks? I'm trying to understand the kind of flavour shady that we're talking about. I think he's a spook of some sort. I think it was about him that Churchill said

it was unhealthy for so much power to be in the hands of a man of whom nobody understood his origins or his trajectory. And, you know, he's a friend of everybody. I mean, he's the director of a museum, you know, and an archaeology. Pinnacle of respectability. Yes, exactly. But behind that, he appears to have been doing also. But for instance, when I, I spent a lot of time trying to find information about him. The Ashmoreland have nothing. They have no records. They say, they say the files have been weeded, was the word they used. We did, which means someone's gone through and destroyed things. Yeah. And somebody some years earlier had done a PhD on him.

And I tracked this person down who said, I've left academia. It was also that her PhD had ended her life. And we're now working in a bar somewhere. Oh, God, it broke. In the outback in Australia or whatever. But I found her, and she said, they have a copy of my PhD at the Ashmonian. And they swore they didn't. And yeah, I did eventually get it.

And, well, he ends up running the Arab Bureau in Cairo during the First World War. Okay. So, all right. So he's been recruited. Let's just imagine that, I mean, what you're suggesting, he's been recruited into what is the equivalent of, I suppose, MI6 or whatever it is. And he's then sent out on this walk, which is important. Yes, give us a picture of the Ottoman Levant in 1908. 1908, 19909 by the time he gets to Beirut.

Well, the Ottoman Levant, like the rest of the Ottoman Empire, is in the state of flux because the young Turks in 1908 had taken power. but they had a sort of power-sharing agreement effectively with the Ottoman Sultan. But in 1909, they literally deposed the Sultan. This has resulted in a real sort of turmoil in the regions and everything that we're going to talk about here, what we call the Middle East, Anatolia and Palestine and Syria and the whole way around into Egypt, is in flux. So what is left of the Ottoman Empire at this period? They still have some European provinces.

There's still Bulgaria, Montenegro. and around. And other bits. Other bits. Greece, exactly, Macedonia. And still the whole way down through Syria, what is now Syria, the Asian part of Turkey, what's now Jordan, Israel, Palestine. So I mean they've got a lot, but...

And Egypt is still nominally Ottoman. What does it pay tribute to the Ottomans, but it looks after itself. The British had invaded in 1882, so it's a British occupied, but they never... but they never, it's called the Veiled Protectorate because the British don't sort of annex it. So it's still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire with the king, the Khadiv. The Khadiv. And then Libya is still part of the Ottoman Territ. So he's walking through what it feels like an empire in decline. Does he form an opinion of what he thinks Turks or Ottoman Turks are like? Yes, several times in his letters home and in his journals, there's this word stupid. He keeps on calling them stupid.

He said, these people simply do not understand how to run an emperor. And he's watching, you know, the last bit of grip that they have. And while he's walking around, because the Sultan has gone, there's a sense among the minorities, and that's most of the region we're talking about, that this might be their moment for independence. So the Armenians, the Kurds, you know, all the tribes. Beginning and some Arab nationalist stuff in Beijing. Exactly. When he's arriving.

The Arab nationalists. And, you know, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of tension. which is why he's told, A, not to walk, and B, not to walk alone. And he ignores both things. And he ignores both things. There's little blonde man. He's not an Englishman. He's not a Welshman.

He's actually an Irishman by blood. Goes off walking with a little backpack with a camera and a revolver and a change of clothes. So is this his way into the Arab culture? There's something that he becomes very enamored of. I mean, some must say in quite orientalist kind of way, but he has this romantic notion of what it is to be Arab. Does he literally knock on people's doors saying, I'm here now, I need somewhere to sleep?

Is that how it works? It is literally that. You know, most of the places where he walks, there are no hotels. So when you're going to a village, and there's this wonderful thing, which there still is in a lot of the Middle East, of hospitality. Right.

You're welcomed in. Even when I was doing this in the 1980s, at the same age, walking through the villages of Syria. and again many of these places didn't have hotels and all I had was a backpack people just took you in so one of the reasons I feel so sad for Syrians who've arrived in Europe and been given the very opposite of that kind of hospitality every single night of my first trip to Syria I was taken in by someone given a bed fed and given a little food the next day to go off on my next trip so tell me tell me this I mean because I've always wondered because you know I've never had the luxury of doing that I suppose it's different actually when you're you're a woman, you're not, it's a male thing.

Unless you're Gertrude Bell. Well, Frayor Starr's, it's a male thing. We'll come on to, actually, Gertrude Bell and Lawrence of Arabia do cross paths. But when you were doing it, was it with an absolute, I'm trying to get into his head, you know, that do you feel immortal at that age? Does the adventure overall good sense? I mean, I was also looking at Crusader castles following crusader routes. And I remember one night, I went with a friend, so I wasn't alone unlike Lawrence,

But I remember one night we arrived at Kalat-Sala-Haddin, Sayun, which is one of the most spectacular. Wonderful place. Why is it spectacular? Because they dug out. There was a very eminence on three sides, cliff faces on three sides, but on the fourth, there wasn't. So they just dug out the rock and created the most enormous ditch, leaving one tiny thing for the drawbridge. For a drawbridge. It's the most romantic castle in the world.

We arrived there at night. The castle was already locked. and so we just put down our sleeping mats and slept outside and then the middle of night we started hearing the howling of wolves and they got closer and that's an uncomfortable moment when you're 18 or 19 and I didn't have a revolver anyway but the point is it could knock on a door and someone would take you in hospitality is a huge thing that probably well a very real thing

but also the need to explain who you are so it's like where have you come from and why are you here and where are you going I don't know if you had this will you but certainly Lawrence did And you start with a limited vocabulary. Sure. Because most of, although in Lebanon, he found a lot of people spoke English. He kept on meeting people who'd gone off to the States to make some money and come back. Quite a lot like that now, isn't it really?

Yeah. But the further he went on, the less English there was and the more Arabic. And he begins to learn. I mean, he had studied a bit before, but he begins to learn Arabic. So he becomes actually sort of a triple threat. I don't know whether Hogarth sent him out with this in his mind, But he's learning the terrain, he's making contacts with people, and he's learning the language. Is he aware?

Is there any awareness inside him at all that he's actually sort of being molded into rather a super spy when needed? There's something you really have to be really careful about with Lawrence, and that is there's so much mythologising after the war, because he ends the First World War as one of the most famous and very soon the most famous survivor. And therefore, everybody around him starts mythologising. And he adds to it by giving out different accounts. and then mythologising his own account. So later on he says, yes, I was preparing myself for this great work, but I don't believe it.

I've always assumed I have to say that he was, he was into his matriculations. Crusader castles are wonderful things to go and see. Yeah, I think he was. You don't need to go and create a entire spy persona for him just because later he ended up in the First World War doing. No, he was just a bit of a weird nerd who was clearly not a team player. Because he says it's cool.

They kept on getting him to play team games. and he would walk off halfway through. He was not a team player. So he's done his now long epic walk. There are no souls left on his sandals. He's done whatever he could. Then what do you do? What do you do after that?

You've had all this adventure. Oh, you go back and finish your degree. You get your first at Oxford. And then, well, then he thought he was given a fellowship, modeling college, and given a grant to go and study medieval glass somewhere in France. But then Hogarth again gets a grant to go and excavate.

this site called Kharkamish. Which is one of the great archaeological sites, the Middle East. Why is it? Describe it to those who don't know, because I don't know about it. It was a Hittite site. It was a Hittite site. And it was dug by Leonard Woolley. That's right.

And the British Museum didn't want it. What the British Museum wanted was a place called Hattusa, which is in the middle of Anatolia, the middle of Asian Turkey, which was the Hittite capital. And the big thing about Hittites at that time was nobody had translated their script. So everyone was looking for the equivalent to the Rosetta Stone, something that would have several letters. This is still a period when people are really trying to find the archaeology of the Bible and Hittites appear in the Bible. So all these sort of people at the early 20th century are trying to establish the truth behind the biblical narrative still.

So the Germans get Hattusa, German archaeologists. There's real nationalism in this. So when you go to Berlin, you see all the stuff from it there in the Berlin. Exactly. And the British Museum gets Kharkham. And Kalkamesh, it sits on the Euphrates River. So it's important. And it was thought, because it was the frontier of the Hittite emperor, maybe there would

be a bi or a trilingual inscription. And it also happens to be right beside where the Germans are building the Berlin to Baghdad railway. There's competition among all the different European powers to woo the Ottomans. So the British are building them a warship. The French are giving them loans and the Germans are building a railway. And these are all different ways of these different European powers to position themselves. if, as seems likely, the Ottoman Empire disintegrates.

People have been waiting for this for about 200 years. And of course, it hasn't happened partly because of different European powers all have an interest in keeping it from the others. And so in order to avoid particularly the Russians getting the straits, all these different powers just keep the Ottomans there intact. So we've got the Germans who are there. We've got the British who are sending out young men to do walking and surveying, maybe. And who else is sort of in this scramble for the...

The French are there. The French have their eye on. Syria, very much. And the Russians, obviously, and, you know, who are concerned about who's going to be controlling the Turkish empire. So it's a time of great intrigue. Yeah, intrigue and spies and meeting in smoky rooms and having smoking discussions now. And within Istanbul, there's huge political unrest. For example, the Armenians are still now about to be fingered as traitors to the empire. They're feeling uncertain. Then there's Armenian nationalists, two different kinds of Armenian nationalists competing with each other. It's a fascinating time.

for Lawrence to be there. Okay, so all of these powers are there present, intriguing, pretending they're not waiting for the whole thing to collapse and walk in and take bits of the Ottoman Empire. It feels like there may be some war on the horizon. What's Lawrence doing at this time? Well, Lawrence is digging at Kalkimish and falling in love with the young man. This is the young man Dahum. This is the young man Dahum. I don't think they have a sexual relationship, just very quickly. Let me make this clear. It's an absolutely blotonic. love. I don't think sex was part of Lawrence's thing. But he writes about him so passionately. What is the work that he writes? Something of Zim. What's it called? The wilderness of Zim.

Yeah, they end up, I mean, okay, so in the winter of 1913, they are asked to go and look for the archaeological traces of Moses and the children of Israel, and which even they know is ridiculous. And they're going with a couple of royal engineers. And they're going because Lord Kitchener, who had been a Royal Engineer, and at this point is the, effectively the ruler in the British in Egypt, knows that there's one bit of this desert route between Palestine and Egypt and the Suez Canal, which is the route to India, and therefore absolutely central to British power. There's one bit that the Royal Engineers did not map. And so he has requested the Palestine Exploration Fund to ask for permission to send Lawrence and Dahum and Woolley

to go and map this bit with a few engineers, royal engineers. That's so interesting because that's actually a little bit how espionage worked in Asia. You know, they sent people up the Himalayas to map bits that might be useful and then put their findings into little bottles and send them down rivers. So, and you know, there was all of this kind of into the hands of spooks this stuff went into.

Okay, so he's done that. He's, tell me a bit about Dahum, the man who stole his heart. Daum was a boy. I mean, probably 13, 12, 13, when Lawrence first sees him in 1910. He's the poorest, the most junior of it. There's like 200 locals working on the excavation at Karkamish. And so this is the guy who brings water on his donkey for the diggers to drink. But there's something about him, apart from his good looks, that Lawrence, you know, that inspires Lawrence.

And it's partly that he's the only one of the 200, according to Lawrence, who's learned how to write any Arabic script. They're all illiterate. And so Lawrence says, well, with the money we're paying you, and the British Museum was paying cash, and most of the work these people did was Barta. Right. With this money, what are you going to do? And Dahum says, I'm going to get myself an education. So Lawrence thinks, I'm going to educate you. So he does. And he's very specific. He doesn't want to give him a Western education. He said, I hate these sort of half-Westernized people. I want him to be the best Arab he can be. And he dedicates, I mean, he will dedicate the seven pillars. He dedicates the seven pillars to him. But also, I mean, more than that, he actually says,

everything I did, I did for this person who I cared about. Which is beautiful. And okay, I mean, you're sticking to this. It wasn't sexual. And that's fine. Ian Foster tried very hard to get Lawrence to admit to a physical relationship. And in the end, said, this man is sexless. Okay.

And there's one thing that comes out in your book. You actually see, this is a man who didn't like to be touched. I mean, what is, how do you know this about? Well, he, there's a certain sort of touching he liked. He liked to be flageulated after the war. That's fine. He paid people to whip him. There were so many public school jokes I could make by now, but I won't.

I think it's to do with his mother, actually. I think that's to do with his mother and the beatings he received from her. He really wasn't a stroker or a fondler, and he was even sort of a bit weird about people shaking his hand. Okay. Really? Like Trump? Yeah. Yeah. Trump did like people shake his out of easier.

No, no, no. Famously, famously so. Okay. So then he's with Dahum. He's living his best life in many ways. You know, he's digging, he's out, and he's sleeping under the stars. He's got this beautiful boy at his side. And as well, he's one.

And as war approaches, there's absolutely no certainty which side the Ottomans will fall on. The French are the people that have lent the Ottomans money. And it's one accident, partly of responsibility of Churchill, that shoves the Ottomans into the war on the side of the Germans. And that's when there's two warships being built in South Shields. South Shields, we should say, is a part of Northern England, a port in the Northern England. And the Ottoman state has borrowed a huge amount to have these ships built. They're going to be the pride of the new Ottoman Navy. And there's a massive campaign, I think, to raise money from ordinary people in the Ottoman Empire to pay for these two new state-of-the-art battleships. And just at the wrong moment, Churchill, who up to now has been saying, no, we're not going to send the ships because they're not quite ready. They need a little bit more of a polish. A couple more welders need to be found. And eventually, he says, no, we're going to impound them. And that impounding. of the warships puts the entire Ottoman Empire into bed with the Russians. And about a week later, the Germans and the Ottomans sign a treaty and the Ottomans enter the war opposed to the

British. And this is World War I has begun. Where is Lawrence, the day it's declared? He's in Oxford. He's gone back. And Westahom? He's gone back. He's left at home. In June 1914, he goes back to Oxford to complete this map. I mean, you know, kitchen. The kitchen is waiting for me. Yeah. He's ordered them back. So he's left everything. He's seen the Ottoman Empire falling apart.

He's seen the Italians have bombarded Beirut Harbor, for instance, and things like that. I mean, he's seen the Ottomans lose their European territories. He's seen that they would talk about an Armenian and then occurred uprising and the Arab Congress and all this stuff. He's seen all that. And yet he still doesn't understand that a war is coming. He doesn't see it. He doesn't call it. He leaves everything in Car Commission in June and goes back.

We're thinking he's going to be back in a couple of weeks. Including his revolver. And later on he says, God, imagine I got shot by my own revolver. How uncomfortable would that be? Well, listen, it's a good time to take a break. Join us after the break when war has begun and where's Lawrence and what's he going to do. Welcome back. You're listening to Empire with me, Anita Arnden.

And me, William Durimple. And our very, very special guest, Anthony Sutton, who has us on the edge of our seats, talking about the young Lawrence, the real Lawrence of Arabia. teeny tiny Lawrence of Arabia But look a huge figure for a reason So war has broken out He didn't see it coming That's where you left us

Just before the break What is the response of Britain And when do they deploy Lawrence And do they know what they want him to do Lawrence, yes He wants to sign up immediately And everyone is saying you can't You can't

Hogarth is saying Don't wait And so by the end of 1914 His brothers His eldest brother And the third one Have signed up up heading to the Somme and death and all that sort of stuff.

But... Do they die there? Yeah, one dies in the battlefield. One's killed in a plane crash. Yeah, they die. But Lawrence finally gets a position as a second lieutenant in the map room in Cairo. That's quite low, no? Yeah, it's really low.

Which you might say is evidence that he wasn't already part of the intelligence services. But he... But this is the Arab Bureau, which has Hogarth at its head, which has all the archaeologists who've been working in the... including Gertrude Bell. Oh, no, listen, for those who don't know who Gertrude Bell is, she's a character. Now do a thumbnail sketch of the extraordinary Gertrude Bell.

Gertie Bell. Gertie Bell to her friends, yeah. She was known, who was the daughter of a wealthy family. She had money behind her. She had a very good education and a lot of guts. And she traveled famously, you know, more, I mean, alone, not alone, because she had an entourage. And a companion, a constant companion with her.

She traveled rough. the whole way through the Middle East. She wrote extraordinarily good books. She was fascinated by the archaeology of the Middle East. And a fluent speaker, I mean, she was one of those people who bothered to learn the language completely. And in Cairo, you've got all these guys who have learned Arabic and Turkey and know the region, but are not soldiers. They are archaeologists and batmakers. No, so this is the Arab Bureau, the Intelligence Department.

So she's in the Arab Bureau. You have a wonderful picture in your book. I mean, I don't know when it was taken of, is it the two of them. of Gertie with... Gertie and Lawrence outside the pyramids. That's right. No, no, that's after the war when they're... Just saying you've got a really good picture.

It's a good picture. With Churchill, on camels. Yes. It's got literally everything in it. Okay, so there they are. There's this pool of characters. Oddballs. They are a bit...

They are the miss-fix. Yeah, they are a bit special. Yeah, they are a bit special. So then what are they doing and what are they then meant to do? Well, they're there to try and work out, you know, you have the Turks as enemies, on, you know, from Cairo up and you have the Italians as enemies on the other side to the West because the Italians have taken Libya. And Lawrence is actually first sent off to Iraq, isn't he?

He is. He's sent off to cut where a massive British force has largely from India. Largely, yes, exactly. Punjabis have just landed on a boat in Basra and marched inland. And through stupidity of superior officers have got themselves, you know, it's surrounded and besieged. besiege and a very, and Lawrence is sent to try and negotiate. A large numbers of Indians are dying. Yeah. I mean, it's weird that he's sent.

I mean, there's no reason. I mean, he's a very junior officer with no, with no brief, but he understands Arabs. I mean, that's the, and he absolutely does. He gets them. And not many Brits do understand Arabic at this period. No. But anyway, if that's a complete failure. So you'd imagine, I mean, he doesn't save the day.

You'd imagine that that would sort of be the end of his career. So he's back in Cairo. Having failed. Having failed. and making such a nuisance of himself. He's a pain in the neck. They don't like him, do they? His commanding officer says,

that man needs a good kicking. And this is something that is actually very accurately portrayed in the movie, where he's the old ball who's quite keen on Arabs. And you have all these other British chaps sitting there who are, you know, find him unspeakable. Find him unspeakable. And are the kind of, you know, central casting British racists of the period

who don't hang around falling in love with 12-year-old Arab boys or whatever Lawrence has been up to. Well, exactly. And also that, you know, Lawrence's famous, never wore a full uniform. Either he wouldn't turn up with his pips or his jacket or his whatever. And, you know, his commanding officers who thought this was part of discipline and whatever, just infuriated by him.

He did was infuriated by him. And this is, of course, where the movie opens. And we see Lawrence being taken from the mat room and offered a special job. Curiously, in fact, he's actually not offered the job. The job is the job of Sir Ronald Stores, who might be a Reginald Stores, I can't remember, who's the Oriental attache. So he's sort of, you know, another one of these extraordinary, I mean, massively overeducated, massively bright, ridiculous Brits, who's, you know, who walks around in linen suits with the sort of sweat patches growing from under his armpits and down his back. And he's going on a mission to talk to the Sheriff Hussein in Mecca.

And Sheriff Hussein is absolutely central to the whole Arab revolt. he is alongside the caliph, the Ottoman sultan, the most important figure in the Muslim world because he is the Sharif of Mecca. The Shariah of Mecca, of the holy place. And direct descendant of the Prophet. And the direct descendant of the Prophet. Although there are lots of those around, it must be said.

But no, there's real status here. So Storz is going to see Sheriff Hussein and Lawrence asked for permission to go with. He's not sent. And they're all saying, yes. Get out to hear. You're annoying, annoying man. So off they go.

And Stores famously didn't talk to anybody he thought was beneath him, beneath his intelligence, which meant that he famously didn't talk to almost anyone at all. And it's in the summer, in this really sweaty journey down the Red Sea on this steamer, they start talking to each other and become very good friends. And Stores has immense respect for Lawrence. And so that helps Lawrence's standing. And also the fact that he speaks Arabic. as the Sheriff Hussein and the children.

And the idea is the same as the idea which failed in Iraq, that he's going to get the local Arabs to rise up and support the British war effort against the Ottoman. So I'm intrigued by this, because it's in the British interest to have these tribes unite and cause a nuisance to the Ottomans. Does he do that because he believes in the United Arab Kingdom? Or does he do it because he wants to help Britain?

What is his motivation? Because he is very successful, isn't he, in talking to people and getting them to work together? I think it's both, actually. I've got a quote for you. In March 1915, he wrote, I want to pull them, the Arabs, all together and to roll up Syria by way of the hijazz,

which is Mecca, in the name of the Sharif, which is the Sharif Hussein, we hope we can rush right up to Damascus and biff the French out of all hope of Syria. 1915. I mean, it's very question, right at the beginning. junior officer. I mean, and he also says at that same time to Hogarth, to his superior,

the Arab Bureau, tell Winston, and this is therefore Winston Churchill, who's first Lord of the Admiralty at this point, I think, that we need a landing in Alexandretta, which is on the, on the Syrian coast now, the port of Antioch, the point of Antioch, of Arabs, who will then take what is, in his view, the Arab lands from the Ottomans. And instead, virtually, Churchill chooses to go to Gallipoli. Gallipoli, which is a disaster. Well, probably Hogarth didn't tell Winston, or if he did. Winston said, well, who the hell is he?

Yeah, really. The second left turn in from nowhere and nothing. In actual fact, it would have been a very good idea. It would have been. It would have been well have raised that. And he would have saved the Armenians. It would have had the Armenian jealousy. It would have been brilliant.

It would have been brilliant. That would have been a masterstroke. But it didn't happen. So what did happen is he goes to Arabia with stores. And he is checking out. the sons of the... Where's Dahum? Da Hum?

So they don't... They don't reunite. They don't see each other. Well, that's a spoiler. Okay. Okay. No good. I don't like spoilers. It's fine. No, you're allowed to tell me that. I'm doing it to William all the time.

All right. Okay. All right. Okay. No, he's... So, yeah, Dahom's back in Carcamish. And we know he's still in Carcumish at this point. But there he is, giving very good advice, Lawrence, that nobody's listening to. And he spots Feisle as the coming man. This man is so important, who is first... important, who is first on Man of the Day. One of Emir,

Emir Hussein's serif's sons. And there are lots of sons. There's Ali and, you know, and Faizal is not the obvious one. He's not the eldest son. But Lawrence thinks he's the one. Other people think this as well.

Why? Because, why? Because there's a solidity to him, there's a sense of measured judgment about him. And Lawrence thinks rightly so that the others are too, either too rash or feckless. Fecless, exactly. they don't have the weight of this man.

So how quickly does the idea of the attack on Akaba appear after this? This is really interesting because this is one of the most famous things that Lawrence is associated with is the capture of Akaba, which transforms the view of the Arabs as far as the British and what the allies are concerned. And in Faisal's notebooks, in his letters and in his biography, it's insisted that Lawrence was at no point part of the negotiations of what they were going to do. Really? But Lawrence absolutely claims it as his idea. So he's telling the truth?

Well, we'll never know. We'll never know. But what is certain is that, okay, so as far as the British were concerned, you have these Arabs, and they have already declared a revolt. Famously, this old man, the sheriff, Hussein, fires his rifle from the top of his palace in Mecca, and that's, but actually nothing very much happens. But it's a huge symbolic moment.

But it's very, it's very symbolic. And so the British is thinking, we must be able to fire this, fire this sort of louder. And just, again, to the contrast with Cut and Cut, the British had worked very hard to get the local Arabs to rise up against the Turks. They thought that quite rightly that many of the Arabs would be very upset with the Turks, that they wouldn't feel any loyalty to the Turks. And it was a complete failure in Iraq. But that's not the case now. When that rifle goes off and it's led by the Sharif of Mecca, it's completely. different things. The British have promised Arabs independence after the war. McMahon, who is the,

you know, the commanding officer, has written letters to the sheriff who say promising independence. Aqaba is really important because up until then, the British had not considered the Arabs a viable force. It's like, well, okay, they're there. They've established their revolt, but actually nothing's happening. So you can't use them. They don't have weight in this global war. And the point about Aqaba is all the Turkish guns famously are facing the water because it's a port and the Turks had assumed that it would be stormed from sea and especially by the British who were in naval power. The Arabs go around the desert, which is a hellish journey. I mean, it's really, really difficult. I've actually done that journey.

I've retraced the... It's not easy, is it? Yeah, not easy to... Were you in a camel? How did you do it? I was in Lankris, in fact. Lankris, okay. Slightly easier then.

Yeah, okay. It didn't take 40 days across the desert for me. Yeah. But it's still a very, very bleak and daunting and fantastic desert. Yeah, it is. And they attack from, famously, they attack from behind. And it's a huge success. It's a huge success, except not for Lawrence, who shoots his camel and falls off.

Why does he shoot? That doesn't happen in the movie. By accident? Yeah, by accident. Okay, that's good. Okay, good, good. I know. It's not very heroic.

Not really, no. He has managed to persuade several tribes to come together for this attack. and on the promise that there is gold in Akaba. And if you remember the movie, there's Anthony Quinn saying, where's the gold? But also, if you remember the movie, and this does happen, Lawrence is very keen for this to be known in Cairo that the Arabs have taken Akaba.

So he makes this ridiculous journey by Camel with one of the tribe. In the movie, it's one of the tribe. In reality, I think it's three or four with him. Yeah, that's right. So in the movie, it's this terrible scene, isn't it? When they arrive and they're hot and they're sweaty, they get these terrible looks because he's brought an Arab.

He's going into the officers club. Yes, and says, serve this man. It's like, you know, he's not allowed in here. He's a bloody foreigner. Yeah. And it's true. Yeah. But the significance beyond the social side of it is that at that point, the British military, you know, the headquarters understands that actually something could be done with these Arab fighters.

Lawrence is encouraged, sent back with a massive amount of gold. I mean, you know, you could say that the Arabs were fighting for independence, but actually they were fighting for gold. And the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars were handed over in gold. And railways start getting blown up, communications get cut, and it begins to work. This is actually something that's really ticking off. Well, when you say there's that cutting, I mean, is this the first sighting of guerrilla warfare that, you know, you can't take on a whole army? You can just slip away at different bits. Lawrence realizes that the Arabs couldn't fight.

a pitch battle with the Ottomans. They have guns and all the modern equipment. Exactly. And the Germans are shipping great quantities of stuff to Istanbul. That's right. The latest German weaponry arrive, including planes. Yeah. But you don't have to face them if you can starve.

Lawrence describes, you know, these armies as being like plants. They're rooted. And he said, suppose we could be like vapor. We could just waft here and there and pop up. Which is effective at the beginning of guerrilla warfare. Amazing. And that's exactly what they do. So they decide there's a large Turkish garrison in Medina.

And they decide they're not going to take it on. They're just going to cut it off. And this provides cover for the British who are now moving up from Cairo to think of invading Palestine under Alambi. That's right. But at the same time as all this is going on and the Arabs are being promised independence and everything, two other people are being promised the same thing.

One is the Zionists are being promised to homeland in Palestine. The Belford Declaration. And secondly, the French are being offered great chunks in the Middle East in the Sykes-Pico agreement. The same thing is being offered to three people at once. So, of course, the whole thing is going to grow up. Does he know? He doesn't know when he starts out in 1960s. Because he's offering this to the Arab friends of his in good faith.

Yeah. risking their lives for their independence. So at the same time, it's being offered to the French. That's right. and indeed to be directly ruled by the book. That's right. And it comes out in 1917 when the Guardian newspaper get hold of it because of the Soviets, pass it to get hold of a copy,

pass it to after the Russian Revolution, pass it to the Guardian newspaper. And Lawrence at this point, whether he already knew it or not, goes to his commanding officer, actually writes a note to Cairo saying, I can't bear it. We have them fighting on a lie. I'm going off to get myself killed.

And he literally disappears for days and we don't quite know what happened. Is that the moment at Derra when he walks in and gets himself in. Well, Derr is exactly around that period. And Derr is such a weird and unlikely event. Well, now you two know about it. I have a clear about it. But this is a really absolutely appalling thing to happen to a human being.

Talk to me what happens. So Lawrence, who is, again, to remind everybody, is blonde and blue-eyed and unusually small. An unusually small. walks into Dera Which is being held by the Ottoman Which is a main ottoman Which is which is Syria

Near the Jordanian border now And what happens And he gets picked up Because you know He's shining like a Felicia beacon Exactly Really And taken to the local commander

Who has him First of all interrogated and beaten up And whatever else And then I mean Everybody knows about Lawrence by then Because he's been blowing up their trains I mean he's a you know He's a character

in the region and then has him sent upstairs to his bedroom where it appears that he was raped and then thrown out in the street the next day and what he writes because he doesn't those are not the words he uses he says that his integrity was defiled but what was he up to it didn't have to go into town he said he said he was going to go get himself killed he did try quite hard it's it's so strange in the film peter o't tool is shown sort of falling apart sort of drinking too much and sort of talking to himself and disillusioned. Is that a close approximation of what you think happened? He's really struggling.

I mean, it's interesting because... He's got all these people to rise up to risk their lives and he knows that they're going to be... Complete shafted to the Irish. And he's absolutely caught in the middle between these two sides because he wants independence for the Arabs and he wants the British to win the war. And for a while, he could see these two things going along

very happily. And at this point, he's real. that actually that's not going to happen. And after the war, he writes, it's a terrible thing to be caught between two cultures. And he describes it as a Yahoo life. You know, you're neither one thing, you're never again.

It's a famous quote. Never again are going to be one thing or the other. So just to follow this through, so by now lots of Indian troops have arrived in Egypt, in large numbers, including Rajasthani, cavalry regiments, camels, all the rest of it. And my father's friend, Brigadier Diljit Verk. He's there too.

and they move up through Gaza, they fight a battle at Ashkelon, and they take Palestine. And meanwhile, what is Lawrence doing in the rear? Well, no, Lawrence isn't in the rear. He and the Arabs are moving up on the desert. Exactly, in the desert. So Alambi is moving up on the fertile land. It's a sort of classic settled and nomad story. And so Alambi and the British Army and Australians and whoever else are moving up on the fertile land,

and the Arabs are going up through the desert. We've only got a little while left on this, and I do want to put something to you. He is interesting, but he's not of enormous importance in the scheme of the British War machine. But there is one thing that then elevates him to the Lawrence of Arabia that we have now, which when are the Lowell Thomas films being made? These are films that suddenly focus in on the white man dressed as an Arab, right? Yeah, exactly.

So Lowell Thomas is an American journalist and, you know, with the news cameras. and he's come to try and find stories that are going to keep the American public on side with the Americans coming into the First World War. And he's in Jerusalem when Alambi and Lawrence have famously walked in rather than ridden in to this holy city to show their sort of humility.

Alanby says, well, if you're looking for a story, go with Lawrence. He's blowing up trains. And so Lord Thomas and his film crew are literally there filming Lawrence and the Arabs going down and blowing up these Turkish trains. Go to Wadina Trune and Jordan today. you can see recreations with this every day for doing. But also, I mean, at home, this is playing like a sensation.

So Lawrence himself describes himself, I think, rather dismissively, as I am just a matinee idol now. But Lowell Thomas realized that every time he shows this man on his screens back at home, the audiences go crazy. So, of course, he becomes quite obsessed with Lawrence. So that's how Lawrence kind of displaces everybody else and becomes Lawrence of Arabia. It's a showbiz. I mean, it is a bit of showbiz.

So what is, in your view, Anthony, I mean, there are two views about this. You said that actually it's not a major thing for the British war effort. Would you agree with that? Is it a big thing for the British war? No, I think without Lawrence, it could have been someone else, but it was Lawrence.

Without Lawrence keeping the Arabs on tight. And actually, maybe Akeba would never have happened without Lawrence. No, exactly. And help and help. And then, you know, they're the first into Damascus. And without keeping the Arabs together. And he understood how to keep these tribes. He understood the temperament,

which no other British officer in the field would have done. So Lawrence takes. Damascus. But in the movie, the Arabs sort of fall apart. They can't agree with each other. The whole thing, there's a fire, there's arson in Damascus. And Lawrence also is exposed at this point as having been representative of this lie that the Arabs are going to get everything. And in fact, they've offered it to the French and to the Zionist too. Yeah, well, also, just outside Damascus, he's heard that Dahum has died. This person, Dahum died of typhoid, probably in 1916, but Lawrence doesn't hear until literally

just before Damascus. And so everything that he's imagined, you know, that he's going to hand these new Arab states and there'll be Dahum and, you know, and Dahum will be part of it. And this whole gift, as he put it, has fallen apart. And he writes, the first night in Damascus, the Mouazin call faithful to prayer, and there's a special prayer said for the thanks for the salvation of Damascus. And Lawrence writes for everybody else, it was a great moment except for me. I knew everything was lost. And then he asks, for permission to basically to disappear. I mean, he's a colonel at this point.

He hands in his rank and wants to disappear. And he does. I mean, he literally disappears. He's... I'm just shame because he's double-crossed his friends. It's literally because he's failed. I mean, and he tries once more. In 1922, the Cairo Conference, the 1919.

He's there represent with Faisal. He's representing Faisal, isn't he? He gets, Faisal is not invited to this sort of post-war carve-up. And Lawrence gets it, gets him in. and then fails with that. And then 1922, when Churchill takes on the colonial office, he asked Lawrence if he'll help him create a new order in the Middle East, and Lawrence lays out his rules.

We're going to have Arab kingdoms, and Churchill agrees. And so Lawrence says, I'll do it for one year. And then after that, he changes his name, and he enlists as a private in the army. He says, I never want responsibility again. He has failed. He changes his name twice and keeps on reenlisting, because the press keep on finding him.

Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence of Arabia. seen you on the movies. Exactly. So he's enlisted as a private soldier. What happens to him after? After what he, well, he enlists as a private soldier, then he ends up on the northwest frontier, Pakistan, where he's translating the Homer, the Odyssey, actually, which is rather appropriate, I thought, for a man who's traveled. But the press find him and there's like all this story. What's Lawrence of Arabia doing in the Northwest frontier? There must be some, wherever he went, Yeah. There's always some story. For instance, what he really wanted to do after the war was go back to archaeology, go back to Car Commission. The French say, we're not having Lawrence for Arabia.

Lawrence of Bloody Arabia. Wherever he goes, there'll be trouble. So they won't let him do that. So he keeps on being found. And eventually in the 1935, when he's coming to the end of, you know, the end of his career as a, as a, he keeps, but he's a private still. I mean, he can go and have dinner with Churchill. The Lord of the Admiralty, the head of the Air Force, the head of the army,

they're all friends of his, along with George Bernard Shaw and Ian Foster and the literary greats of the time. Because by this stage, he's written the book. And he's not just a good book. It's one of the great books. The seven pillars we're talking about. But he hasn't published it. So it's not public knowledge because he doesn't want to,

he knows what a fuss it's going to make. And it must be said that when it was published, it was the biggest selling book after the Bible. It sold an absolute fortune. And all of the royalties went to benevolent fund for widows of armed forces. And then what happens? It's a very tragic end.

And then, yeah, so he's fine. He has a lovely cottage, Clouds Hill. which is really his retreat. And he only really had two homes of his own. One was a house he built at Carcumish, which you can go and visit. They've excavated. There's not very much of it to see.

But he actually built that from scratch. And this lovely cottage called Clouds Hill in Dorset, which is now National Trust. And it was kept exactly as it was on this day in 1935, where he's still being hounded by the press. And all he wants is to disappear and occasionally be whipped by one of his friends. It's not much too much too hard

That's a floggy thing It's a floggy thing It's a floggy thing It carried on But he loves fast First of all He had a really expensive push bike when he was cycling through France

And then when he grew up He had motorbikes And he loved really fast motorbikes And he was going fast And he had just been into London To visit his friends The editor of the Times And the Daily Mail or whatever

To persuade them To stop hounding him Because everywhere he went That was written up and he just wanted to disappear. So he was close to, and he says at this time, I wonder what it's like to be a leaf falling from a tree. There's really a sense of end about him.

And anyway, he's going very fast on a Dorset Lane, goes around a corner and the couple of kids on push bikes, and he swerves out of the way and has a motorbike accident and is in a coma for a few days and then dies. Aged. 35 plus 12. Oh, you can't do maths either. Oh, goodness me.

Age 47. Age 47. age 46. I can't believe historians who can't do math. He was 46. And at his funeral, Churchill gives the keynote address and says,

Having ignored his advice during the war, says we will never see his like again. Anthony, you've given quite a sympathetic view of Lawrence because there are those who say he's the great double-crosser. He's gone the Arabs. He's led them all to risk their lives and then they've taken everything away.

whether or not you accept that he is basically acting with honour as far as you can in difficult circumstances. How far do you think he's actually responsible for so many of the problems of the Middle East today? Because of all the issues that are there, Israel, Palestine, Arab countries, tribes without flags that have no identity split up along straight lines in the desert, unresolved issues of Turkey and the Arabs, no home for the Kurds, and Armenian genocide. Obviously, we can't put all of these at Lawrence's door. No, not all of them. But how far do you think that the mess that he helped create is responsible for the mess in the Middle East today?

I think is absolutely responsible for it. And, you know, he was a complex man, but he, and it's not really enough to say he was doing his best and in good faith he really wanted the best for Arabs. Because I think even his view of his best case scenario was, you know, were a series of Arab states, each one run by the son of Sheriff Hussein of Mecca,

the Hashemite kingdoms, was, you know, would not have worked. I mean, it didn't work because for a little while Faisal becomes king of Syria. And effectively, they don't want him. I mean, the Syrians are completely different people to the Hashemites. You know, this is like trying to put a Frenchman on the British throne. It doesn't go down well. And I don't understand why he didn't.

Prince of Orange has been made King of England. Yeah, exactly. Various clavarians and random Germans turning up and claiming monarchy. No, okay, that was a bad example. But I don't understand why he didn't understand that. And also, for instance, when he did his walk in 1909, he came out with an extraordinary comment walking through Palestine saying, I don't know why they don't give it all to the Jews.

They seem to be the only people who can do anything with it. So a really complicated situation and no obvious solution and lots and lots of good intentions. But yes, I think a lot of what he did, has ended up making things worse. Anthony, thank you very, very much. It's a very sad and moving story. Anthony, you've been wonderful.

Thank you very, very much. Anthony Satin's book, Young Lawrence, a portrait of the legend as a young man is available from John Murray. That's all we have time for today, but for me, William Duremple. And me, Anita Arndon. You can't do that.

How do you like it to share? I can. That's my thing. I can. And I will, and I might. How'd you like that? Anyway, it is goodbye from us. Goodbye.