PREVIEW： Epochs #202 ｜ Lawrence of Arabia with Luca Johnson： Part I
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Summary
In this episode of Epochs, we are joined by historian Luca Johnson to discuss the life and career of T.E. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, aka the uncrowned king of Arabia. We discuss his life, his career, his work, his books, his films and everything in between.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Epochs. Just a little notice for you, unfortunately we are interrupting the
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Henry V series, that will be continuing, to bring you this special two-part conversation with Luca
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Johnson all about the life and career and achievements of Lawrence of Arabia. So once again
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we will be returning to the Henry V series. Thank you for your patience. Hello and welcome to Epochs
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where this episode we should be talking all about the life and achievements of T.E. Lawrence,
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aka Lawrence of Arabia, aka the uncrowned king of Arabia, as well as other names. I'm joined by
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Luca Johnson. How are you Luca? I'm great, really great Beau. Yeah, wonderful to be here. I think
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this is the fifth Epoch I've done with you now, but it's the first that I've actually been able to sit
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down with the venerable beard. So yeah, big moment, big moment. Cool, well I've been wanting to talk
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to somebody or do some sort of content on Lawrence for a long, long time. I've been fascinated. I
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remember seeing the film, the David Lean early 60s film when I was a kid. It was on TV. It used to be
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on TV a fair bit, like The Great Escape or Zulu, Lawrence of Arabia. They used to show it on TV all the
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time. They don't anymore for whatever reason. No. So I remember seeing that as a kid and then when I
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grew up a bit in my late twenties, I suppose, I became aware of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. That is
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the book, his memoir that he wrote after the war. And since then, I've read Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
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I don't know, like four or five times, a bit too often. I've listened to it on audiobook a couple
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more times than that. And then I've read around Lawrence a fair bit as well. There's a good book
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by a guy called Michael Corder. Michael Asher wrote one, Scott Anderson. I got my copy,
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the abridged copy by Robert Graves of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I've read that through a couple
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of times. Because he wrote a biography about Lawrence, didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. They were good.
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They were good friends. Yes. Bernard Shaw and Robert Graves and Lawrence were all good friends.
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Oh, he had a massive collection of friends. Yeah, yeah. Huge. So, yeah, I'm just fascinated
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by the story. I'm fascinated by the war in the East. World War I we're talking about in the East,
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the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the East. So, yeah, I just know loads about it. And so I'm
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really looking forward to this conversation. What about your researches and readings?
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Well, I do actually remember watching the film. I think my dad showed it to me when I was about
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14, something like that. But I hadn't seen it since, you know, and obviously I've grown a lot
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since then and developed an entire, you know, political understanding of the world and just,
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you know, more of a historical grounding in it. And so, yeah, I still think, I mean,
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David Lean is one of my absolute favourite directors. I have niggles with the film.
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But nothing that, you know, ruins, I still, it's basically a masterpiece. It is. But
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on a personal level, I'm not saying it's an inferior film, but I think Bridge on the River
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Quaid just ages it for me in terms of David Lean films. But it's absolutely remarkable as a film.
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And then, yeah, in just preparation for this, I've just for months just buried my head in
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all things Lawrence. Read Seven Pillars, of course, and The Mint. And I've not read his translation of
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The Odyssey. Yeah, but, and then, yeah, a few, few barographies, Jeremy Wilson one in particular.
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And yeah, so it's been, it's been really wonderful because you just, when you spend that amount of
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time, you really feel like in a silly, you actually really get to know them. You know,
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I know what you mean. There's another one by Little Hart, Sir Basil Little Hart.
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So, yeah, I feel like I sort of know Lawrence. Although, having said that, he's a really,
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really complicated person, a complicated character, right? So a lot of people, many,
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most people, really, you meet in the world, they're kind of, what you see is what you get, usually.
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Like, it's kind of rare where someone deep down inside their core is sort of unknowable or very,
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very difficult, many, many layers to their character or personality, and you only ever see the top layer
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of it. That's actually quite rare when people are that complicated. But Lawrence, T. Lawrence
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Definitely one of those people where, well, we'll get into it and we'll talk all about his life.
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So before we start, I wanted to just give a little bit of an overview for perhaps a few people
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who might not know anything about him, or even if they have seen the film, don't know about him
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in great detail. So, I mean, he was Victorian, essentially, right? All the people that were adults
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by the time of World War I were born and raised in the Victorian period, essentially. So his
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upbringing, his childhood was a late Victorian one. Yeah. You've got to remember that, right?
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1888, wasn't he? So, yeah, still got, well, yeah, 13 years left of Queen Victoria's reign
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And so, you know, when people live on into the 30s or even into the World War II era or
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after, you remember that what's rolling around in their head is sort of the late Victorian,
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You know, I hope to live for a few decades more, but rolling around my head is like the
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It could be like the 2050s, but I'm still in the 1990s in some way.
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Anyway, so the people of World War I, particularly a sort of late Victorian Edwardian people,
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If you're a field marshal or a general in your 60s in 1916.
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Um, but when, uh, one of the, um, one of the military intelligence officers, when they
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first met him on his, on the deck of a ship, when he first went to Jidda for the first time,
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uh, remarked of him, uh, who is this extraordinary pipsqueak?
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Abu, uh, Abu Tayy, um, the, the great Bedouin war master called him the world's imp.
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Um, it's one of the first things to mention is he was quite short, wasn't he?
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Some people say he was as short as five two, but I think when he joined the RAF, they measured
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And what, what's even more, um, incredible about his height is that it was atypical within
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He was the only one of his several brothers who was quite a shorty, you know, they all,
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But he just wasn't, he wasn't a big guy, which is interesting because, um, Peter O'Toole
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Um, so in the film, Lawrence of Arabia is, but he was blonde haired and blue eyed.
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Um, I mean, there's the Circassian people, Sarah from that region, but still, and sometimes
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blue eyed, but still couldn't really pass as an Arab.
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Um, another quote by, uh, Michael Corder, he said of him, no man ever tried harder to
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serve two masters or punished himself more severely for failing.
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Because one of the headlines to talk about Lawrence is that, of course he was a British
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So he's loyal to the crown, King George, but also tried to serve the Arabs, truly serve
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Whether you'd say that was either King Hussein of Mecca or Faisal himself.
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Um, and you know, that's one criticism of Lawrence is that he was duplicitous and stuff.
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In a sense, I suppose he was, but he massively beat himself up for it and felt guilty,
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great crazily for it, almost to the point of suicide and depression.
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Took him a long time after the war to come to terms with his part.
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In the whole thing and just come to peace with that aspect of his life.
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He definitely thought it was completely disgraceful what he'd done or what the British had done,
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what the foreign office or the colonial office had done.
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Um, another quick quote from Young, one of the other officers that was out there with
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him, who in fact was, uh, one, one book I read said he was Lawrence's understudy.
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But anyway, there was another army intelligence officer that was out there and they didn't
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Eventually they sort of came to terms, but for a long time, they were sort of rivals and
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So this is a quote from someone who didn't like Lawrence.
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He said, but he still can't deny the rightness of the man.
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He said, uh, Lawrence could certainly not have done what he did without the gold.
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A load of gold was thrown around and couldn't have done what couldn't have done what he did
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without the gold, but no one else could have done it with 10 times the amount, no amount
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of pomp and circumstance could have won him the position he gained among Arabs.
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If he had not established himself by sheer force of personality as a born leader and shown
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himself to be a greater daredevil than any of his followers.
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Um, there is a, it's towards the end of seven pillars of wisdom, but it feels like an appropriate
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thing to bring up now that he does say, even since when he was at, um, uh, the Oxford high
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school, you know, back in when he was about 13, 14, he had some dreams, some vision of actually
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You know, even then there was almost that desire within him to be like a Carlisle and great
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man of history to move events, to, to change the world.
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Cause on one level, he was very sort of gentlemanly and humble and understated and softly spoken.
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And the other side of his personality, this is what we're talking about where he's multiple
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layered sort of a deep character is that he's very humble and gentlemanly on one level, but
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also dying to be a man of action and a self-publicist and a giant ego underneath this very humble
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sort of quiet exterior, like sort of academic, but, but, but actually not that really at his
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Um, so one last quote I just got here about sort of kind of his appearance, uh, cause loads
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of people always sort of talked about his appearance.
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Um, this is from Michael Corder, who wrote, um, un-military in appearance, he might be.
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He often neglected to put on his sand brown belt.
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This is obviously in the period of the second half of world war one.
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Um, yeah, he often neglected to put on his belt and he wore leather buttons rather than
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But few people disputed his intelligence, his attention to detail, or his capacity for hard
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His manner was more that of an Oxford undergraduate than a staff officer.
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And many people below the rank of a field marshal or a full general were offended by it or dismissed
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him as an eccentric poseur or show off who did not belong in the army at all.
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Not only did Lawrence not fit in, but he was a non-smoker, a teetotaler, and when bothered
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to eat at all by inclination of vegetarian, except on occasions when he was obliged to
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Um, so you get that in the film actually, like quite early on.
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Uh, cause obviously in the military, in the beginning of the 20th century, it's all, everything's
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And, um, like it's, it's disgraceful not to have your uniform in perfect condition and
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Um, one of his senior officers, but you either hated him or you loved him for that.
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And all the people that mattered, people like field marshals and secretaries of states and
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kings and generals, they liked him for it though.
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Because they're sort of above that, uh, having to be very formal.
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So they liked it largely, not every single one of them.
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Like quite often he'd meet someone, a senior officer, a colonel or something.
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And their first impression of him is, uh, who does this guy think he is?
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And then very quickly he befriends them and they end up loving him and being his, their
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I think it might've been Wilson or it might've been Newcomb said when they first met him,
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they said, um, that he's quote, an odd gnome, half cad with a touch of genius.
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But that's what lots of people thought, like what a queer fellow.
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Um, or asexual, somewhere between homosexual and asexual.
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Anyway, we'll talk about that when we get to it.
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But, um, um, people thought what a weird one, what a funny character.
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And then, but they nearly always, with one or two exceptions, ended up loving him and being
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a correspondent and a, and a, and a, and a friend for life.
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Uh, because he just did seem charismatic, right?
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It seemed to have that, whatever it is, that thing, that certain something about him.
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Should we just start then talking about his early life then?
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Um, so, um, I don't know how much you know about, like, the illegitimacy of his father.
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Oh, well, I was just going to say that it's, it's one of those things that actually, so
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Lawrence was the second son, of course, of, uh, Thomas Chapman.
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It's quite remarkable actually, because the whole point was that his father, Thomas Chapman,
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And I think that family stretched back with lands in Ireland all the way back to the first
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John Chapman, who was a cavalry officer in Cromwell's army.
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And then his, his father, I suppose, somewhat cocked it up a little bit by, um, basically
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losing out on, on the inheritance because he ran away with the, the mistress, like the,
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um, governess, the governess, yes, of the, of the household.
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Because, um, he was pushed away from his wife by, she had a turn to sort of radical Christian
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fanaticism and, um, you know, which, um, isn't the most romantic thing in the world.
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Chapman took other interests in other women who ended up being Lawrence's mother.
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So the first child, um, Bob Robert was actually born in Dublin, but then they, they moved quickly
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He was, uh, a low, one of the low list peers, but yeah.
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So landed gentry though, in Ireland, the English aristocracy in Ireland, um, you know, not an
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earl or a duke or something, but, but a peer with a big estate, a massive house, like a giant
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sort of, um, uh, mansion or sort of thing, lots and lots of money, like an income.
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Um, and he like rode horses and was just, uh, yeah, landed gentry and he had, I think
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And she apparently was a, an insufferable pain in the ass.
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And as you can imagine, like all English aristocracy in Ireland, she was massively Protestant,
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like a Protestant fundamentalist, you might say.
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How can you be a, can you be a fundamental, anyway.
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So, um, but in Ireland, um, and he had four daughters with her and he obviously, obviously
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wasn't in love with her because when he got his young governess in to help raise these four
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daughters, um, he got her pregnant and it was a disgrace.
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And, um, and when his wife found out, she kicked him out, uh, but refused to give him a,
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Um, so he just, he walked away from the estate, from the money, from the title.
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But he just left her, his daughters, the estate, went and lived with the new woman and went
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on to have, well, she got pregnant eight times.
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I mean, it's the late Victorian period, child mortality is insanely high, even then, but
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So he had four girls with his first wife and five boys with his second wife.
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Um, so, uh, and yeah, it seemed to be very happy with her.
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Um, it seems they changed his name from Chapman to, to Lawrence.
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Which is the name that she'd come across to Ireland with.
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And they traveled, they sort of moved around a fair bit over the years.
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Lawrence, so his name's Thomas Edward Lawrence, because his middle name's Edward, in his family,
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And I think close friends from childhood all called him Ned.
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Um, uh, so, but, but so he's illegitimate and, and, uh, so, and a bastard.
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Um, now to that, I've said, I've talked about being a bastard before.
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And also because Lawrence was, seems to have been the only one of his brothers to actually
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suspect that was just something unorthodox about his parents' situation.
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You know, whether it was that he overheard a conversation one time or, you know, so he grew
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up with this feeling of insecurity within himself about his upbringing, about his positioning
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life that, you know, that, that I, I think he incorrectly believed that his father wasn't
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Yeah, there's some suggestion of that, isn't there?
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But we don't know if, yeah, there's some suggestion of that.
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Um, and, uh, well, so, I mean, as back in those days, the Edwardian period, it, it did
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matter if it sort of dictated all sorts of things about your life, if you were illegitimate
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Um, but yeah, so, but I think one of the things to say about Lawrence in the context of his
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family and his four, his four brothers, uh, he seems to have been the odd one out in every
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As you say, like physically, he seemed like the odd one out, um, intellectually, they were
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all bright boys, but he was like some sort of child prodigy, right?
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Apparently he could read when he was three or four, or he could read the paper upside down
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They started on Latin when he was five, stuff like that.
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I was a kind of precocious child, but, um, that he was crazy, like an actual genius, right?
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And when he went, started to go into school, all the teachers saw in him some sort of project,
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but he refused to play games and all his brothers were real team players.
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I think I had a quote from, uh, his form tutor, if you want me to.
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I found it really interesting because actually, you know, Lawrence is one of the things to
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say about Lawrence is that his views about life and about the world, obviously, like
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You know, he started out as a very idealistic youth and then became more and more, I think
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it's fair to say nihilistic actually as, as time went on, but there was this, but, but
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then there were also some aspects of him that from a young age, you can say, no, they stayed
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And yeah, this was from his, uh, form master in 1901.
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He said, he had a strong sense of humor, which must have saved him many times in troublesome
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And we all wondered why he did not like, not play games when the free wheel bicycle came
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He was the first boy in the school to have one and to have the first three speed gear.
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Uh, he was an enthusiast on the physical excellence in human beings, although his own build was
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not as handsome as that of his brother, Will, or as upright, tall and straight as that of
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He was unlike the boys of his age and time, for even in his school days, he had a strong
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leaning towards the Stoics and apparent indifference towards pleasure or pain.
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What a remarkable bunch of things to say about a kid.
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None of those are sort of childish qualities, really, aren't they?
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