T.E. Lawrence photo and news release in response to his motorcycle accident, 1935.
T.E. Lawrence photographed in London, 1919. Below is the same paisley-printed robe as seen in the photograph. Lawrence had it altered into a dressing gown.
British Heroes vignette stamps featuring T.E. Lawrence. Bid on them here (not my auction): http://www.ebay.com/itm/T-E-LAWRENCE-OF-ARABIA-STRIP-OF-10-MINT-STAMPS-2-/330894378395
A better view of the new “lost photo” of T.E. Lawrence (on left). The photo on the right is not newly discovered.
Colonel Lawrence
‘Called by the Arabs ‘destroyer of engines’, visits the place where they were made after the war - at the North British Locomotive Company’s headquarters at Springburn, Glasgow, accompanying King Feisal.’
from: Railways Then and Now; OS Nock; 1975; Crown Publishers Inc.
I’ve actually never seen this photo before! Nice find!!
I saw Alexander Korda last month. I had not taken seriously the rumours that he meant to make a film of me, but they were persistent, so at last I asked for a meeting and explained that I was inflexibly opposed to the whole notion. He was most decent and understanding and has agreed to put it off till I die or welcome it. Is it age coming on, or what? But I loathe the notion of being celluloided. My rare visits to cinemas always deepen in me a sense of their superficial falsity… vulgarity, I would have said, only I like the vulgarity that means common man, and the badness of films seems to me like an edited and below-the-belt speciousness. Yet the news-theatres, as they call them (little cinemas here and there that present fact, photographed and current fact only), delight me. Korda is like an oil-company which has drilled often and found two or three gushers, and has prudently invested some of its proceeds in buying options over more sites. Some he may develop and others not. Oil is a transient business.
-T.E. Lawrence to Robert Graves (April, 1935)
Dear me, how sententious I get! Only some instinct tells me that the people who fuss about the money of the world are on the wrong tack. Money only serves to keep us alive: and people like you and me wouldn’t impair the usefulness of the world if we went down. I incline to resent our presuming to tell our physical betters what ought to be done. Disposing other people’s minds is an infectious activity.
“
| — | T.E. Lawrence to Ezra Pound (December, 1934) |
“I tried to get Heinemann’s elephant book Novels Today in Aberdeen but they had it not. Distribution faulty, for Lady Eleanor Smith and Strong are both first-class. The book-shop lady tried to work off on me a thing called Angel Pavement, also by Heinemann. She said everybody was buying it. ‘Not quite everybody,’ I protested politely. ‘This very man’ she said ‘wrote Good Companions.’ ‘Dreary artificial sob-stuffed thing’ I snorted, having luckily read Good Companions. ‘You ARE hard to please’ she grumbled, offering me The Boy’s Book of Colonel Lawrence at a reduction, seeing I was in uniform and he now in the R.A.F. I told her I knew the fellow, and he was a wash-out: then I bought a Daily Express and escaped the shop. Alas, for I wanted to read Dewar Rides again.”
-T.E. Lawrence to F. N. Doubleday (September, 1930)
Descriptions of T.E. Lawrence Part I
“The room opened on to an outside balcony and I can see him now framed in the doorway against the trees and sky in clothes that were nondescript, if not khaki, with a half apologetic grin on his face and an introductory bend of his body, as he entered, the mischievousness of which I did not sense in that fleeting silhouette. This picture and the simultaneous thought ‘Whoever can this extraordinary little pipsqueak be?’ have remained embedded in my memory ever since.” - Ernest M. Dowson on seeing Lawrence for the first time in 1913.
“Lawrence was, in manner, quiet and assuming; his figure slight and unimposing; but a high forehead and a clear eye betokened a brain of unusual power, a mind dominant over the body.” - Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby
“I caught a glimpse of this Arab’s eyes, steel grey eyes, and they seemed to glint with roguish impudence. From his white headdress there came a soft, almost girlish, ‘Is your Captain with you?’ I think I dropped my cigarette. He patted me on the shoulder and reassured me: ‘My name is Lawrence, I have come to join you.’” - S.C. Rolls
“Lawrence was of lesser medium stature and, though slight, strongly built. His forehead was high; the face upright and in proportion to the back of the head, long. His yellow hair was naturally-growing pre-War hair; that is parted and brushed sideways; not worn immensely long and plastered backwards under a pall of grease. He had a straight nose, piercing gentian-blue eyes, a firm and very full mouth, a strong square chin and fine, careful and accomplished hands.” - Sir Ronald Storrs
“I first met Lawrence shortly after the War at Oxford, in a New College Common Room. I was at once fascinated by his laughing, roving blue eyes and his high domed forehead, which gave the distinction of intellect and an assurance of high character with the power of both thought and action.” - Sir Herbert Baker
“I first saw him in Lowell Thomas’s film at the Albert Hall: glorious photography, glamour and oratory. I came out drunk… . . He was on the platform, and he had to introduce himself, for I could not connect him with Lowell Thomas’s screen-seraph. I met a small grinning, hatless kid, bothered by a lot of untidy hair falling over his eyes.” - Eric H. Kennington
