David Lean Part II - Master of the film epic

[Chris Knipp]

You do love the juicy gossip bits (and who doesn't?) so you may like this about Alec Guinness' recently published (in excerpt) catty diaries: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz...ng-legend.html So many people are not terribly admirable if we go into the intimate details of their thought and behavior.

John E. Mack's Lawrence biography A PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER says in an extended passage about the boy and the relationship that Lawrence loved the way Dahoum or Selim Ahmad spoke Arabic and said he wanted to speak like that. And it seems evident that Lawrence's relationship with this boy was quite possibly the love of his life. But I would question the oft repeated statement that his association with S.A. put the final touches on T.E.'s Arabic. Maybe it's true; I'd just question it. I'd also dwell on other things than this relationship, mythologized though it may have been by T.E. himself, if I were only giving a short description of Lawrence. Most of David Lean's film too is about other aspects and Lawrence's private loves and possible sexual oddities have little bearing on his role in a period of Middle Eastern history that's unfortunately as significant for what did not happen in the aftermath of WWI as for what did.

There is such a slew of biographies of Lawrence it may be hard to choose wisely among them and many, possibly all, are unreliable. The only sure thing is that T. E.l Lawrence is mysterious, and that his life was obscured by the myths that were constructed around him, as well as his own secrecy. That you can get from the earlier biographies that I read.

Some articles I found interesting to look at just now about more recent books on T.E.L.:

What We Need to Learn From T.E. Lawrence
Michael Korda By Michael Korda November 14th 2010

Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2013, Scott Anderson)

Note this from Janet Maslin's 2010 NYTIMES review of Michael Korda's LIFE AND LEGEND OF T.E. LAWRENCE:

Most important, Mr. Korda makes himself a credible authority on some of the most egregious misconceptions that surround Lawrence’s story. He is particularly dismissive of the idea that postwar Lawrence, variously known as T. E. Ross and T. E. Shaw, lived a monastic and friendless life. If anything, he sees Lawrence as an adroit networker with many powerful friends and a remarkable ability to gain access to world leaders. He thinks the romantic allure of Lawrence’s accomplishments should not obscure the great foresight, planning abilities and meticulousness for which he should be equally famous.

Even more recent, from NPR, The Real 'Lawrence of Arabia', Putting the Man and His Myth Into Historical Context by Jacli LYden, about a book by David Frumkin, A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Lyden reports on the true and the false in SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM as noted by Frumkin.

"But it was typical of Lawrence to play down and be modest about the things that he actually did — while telling whoppers, lies of all sorts, about things he claimed he had done," Fromkin says

The NPR summary goes on:

"Lawrence did not change the map of the Middle East — the spheres of influence had been drawn up secretly between Britain and France in 1916," Lyden says. "But it may be that the best way to regard T.E. Lawrence is to consider what would have happened in the Middle East without him.

"By 1922, he was advisor to Winston Churchill, and it was then Britain installed the adroit Faisal as King in Iraq," Lyden says, "And later, when it was already a fact on the ground, Abdullah as Emir in Jordan." Of all the other British officers in the Middle East, Lawrence was one of the few urging independence and self-rule for the Arabs

I don't think these points are new -- I got them from the biographies I read when I was in the Army -- but they are important points to note.