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Journal
of the T. E. Lawrence Society Vol. X, No. 2, Spring 2001 Edited by Philip Kerrigan Malcolm Brown, 'T. E. Lawrence and Fame: the spur and the snare' (7-28) The
fame that Lawrence achieved during the Arab Revolt presented him, in the
post-War years, with an insoluble problem. The ambitions nurtured in his
youth had been realized, yet his success had proved to be a two-edged sword.
Fame can be oppressive, which produced in Lawrence an ambivalent state of
mind. As Malcolm Brown writes, 'he later tried to get rid of his fame,
but he never quite did so entirely' and, 'Would his ghost have wanted
his memory to be entirely ignored? . . .I think not.' One is reminded of
a line from Tacitus, 'Even for learned men, love of fame is the last
thing to be given up.' Harold Orlans, 'Love and Exasperation: Lawrence's relations with his mother' (29-42) Harold Orlans' subject is the relationship between Lawrence and his mother. This provides another example of the complexity of Lawrence's mind and how his ambivalence caused mental tension. Although the intensity of feeling between the two varied over the years, the nature of it was such that the author believes that even had the son lived on, the relationship would not have changed. George W. Gawrych, 'T. E. Lawrence and the Art of War at the dawn of the twenty-first century' (43-59) Lawrence's
interest in the military commenced at an early age. When in his teens he
found family life unbearable at Polstead Road and decided to leave home,
it was to the Army he fled for recourse. In 1908 when the Oxford O.T. C.
was formed, he was one of the first to volunteer, and when war broke out
in 1914 he joined the Army. His war experience was restricted to guerrilla warfare, the subject of his military writings. But as George Gawrych points out in his article, 'T. E. Lawrence and the Art. of War', some of the principles enumerated in the 'Twenty-seven Articles' and Lawrence's other writings can be applied to the wider field of regular warfare Dr Gawrych teaches at the U.S. Army's Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His article has been adapted from a presentation he gave on 6 May 2000 at the Santa Clara University Conference. Brian Holden Reid, 'T. E. Lawrence and Liddell Hart' (60-82)
B. H. Liddell Hart This
article examines the relationship between Lawrence and his biographer
Basil Liddell Hart. They first met in the 1920s and the friendship
flourished as they found that their thinking on military strategy had
much in common. Liddell Hart, like Lawrence, had a talent for forming
friendships; their personalities, however, could not be more dissimilar.
Liddell Hart was the extrovert with an exotic lifestyle: Lawrence had an
ascetic disposition - 'disdain for most of the prizes, the pleasures and
comforts of life'. It was a disposition that Liddell Hart greatly admired. Storm
Jameson, the novelist, wrote, '. . . one of the most remarkable men I
know, Basil Liddell Hart, is governed, or governs himself, by an extreme
distaste for the human vices of intolerance and prejudice. This
discipline, self-applied by an intelligence at once lucid and solid,
would make him inhuman if he were not the most loyal, the friendliest
and most human person in the world, the gayest of pessimists, and the
best company.' * Raymond Postgate, journalist and social historian, wrote, 'He looked, perhaps deliberately, like a pre-1914 German or French caricature of an ineffective aristocratic British officer, the kind with a tight red uniform and a pillbox hat. But this deceptive manner concealed what Generals Guderian, Auchinleck and Montgomery have called the finest military brain of our century; Also {rightly) the most obstinate.' * Professor Holden Reid is the Director designate of the Department for War Studies at King's College, London. For a number of years he was Resident Historian at the Staff College, Camberley. *Alchemist
of War: The life of Basil Liddell Hart, by Alex Danchev, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1998, p.1. Previous: Contents of Vol. X, No. 1 Next: Contents of Vol. X1, No. 1 You
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