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St. John's College

• T. E. Lawrence's brothers Bob and Will were undergraduates at St. John's College, and he himself attended tutorials there with Sir Ernest Barker. The college library holds the copy of the subscribers' Seven Pillars that he gave to his mother. In 1919, while Lawrence was at All Souls, he became friends with the poet Robert Graves, then an undergraduate at St. John's. Graves's papers are now in the college library.

• The college website includes a history and an interactive tour.

• This is the fourth time that a T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium has been held at St. John's.

Photo © St. John's College, Oxford
Click on the picture to visit St. John's College website

Provisional programme. The speakers, papers, and order of papers may change. Please check this web page for updates.

1.00-2.00: lunch in St. John's College dining hall

2.30 - 3.30: second session

In 2004 this workshop discussed Lawrence's physical legacy - the documents, photographs and objects that provide direct evidence about his life.

Little of the physical legacy has survived by accident. Most of it has been deliberately collected and preserved. Lawrence himself was a collector. He helped to build the collections of local mediaeval pottery and Hittite seals now in the Ashmolean Museum. His gift of the manuscript of Seven Pillars to the Bodleian was the foundation stone for the major T.E. Lawrence collection that the library now holds. 

Interested collectors have gathered and preserved much of the evidence about Lawrence used by his modern biographers. This year's workshop will discuss aspects of that process.

Collecting is not just a rich man's hobby. The 'collecting bug' afflicts men and women of all ages and from all walks of life. Collectors acquire specialist knowledge, undertake exacting detective work - and devote to their collections countless hours of unpaid time. Scholars owe much to their efforts: when many people are looking, less is overlooked.

Lawrence was involved in so many activities that his life opens up numerous collecting fields: mediaeval and Hittite archaeology, military history, Middle-East history, diplomatic history and memoirs, fine printing, RAF History and marine craft.... In each of these fields the material can be widely varied. It often includes books, ephemera, images, manuscripts and letters, objects, and more.

The contributors will include:

Jack Flavell, a Trustee of the society, was formerly an Assistant Librarian at the Bodleian Library and is now editor of its Quarterly Record. Jack played a key role in consolidating the Bodleian's holdings of T.E. Lawrence printed materials. He also organised the library's T.E. Lawrence Centenary exhibition.

Edward Maggs, Managing Director of Maggs Bros., antiquarian booksellers, London, is the leading specialist in rare T.E. Lawrence books and manuscripts.

Dr Philip M. O'Brien, of Whittier College, California, is author of T.E. Lawrence, A Bibliography. This award-winning work involved assembling a noted bibliographical collection. Phil was also a friend of one of the greatest of all T.E. Lawrence collectors, the late Edwards H. Metcalf. The Metcalf T.E. Lawrence collection, now in the Huntington Library, is currently being catalogued.

SATURDAY 23 SEPTEMBER

Dr Andrew Millward, Cycling in the early 1900s - transport, sport and pastime

Both Lawrence and his father were keen cyclists. Lawrence cycled large distances in quest of brass rubbings and, later, to visit mediaeval castles in Britain and France. In the last weeks of his life he cycled from Bridlington in Yorkshire to his home in Dorset. His cycling journeys seem remarkable today, but were not exceptional at the time. This paper will set these activities in context, discussing cycling in Britain in Lawrence's day.

Andrew Millward wrote his doctoral thesis on this subject.

One hundred years ago, Lawrence explored Brittany in search of mediaeval buildings and ruins. Peter Hibbert has retraced his journeys, to examine the historical sites and buildings that Lawrence found so interesting. Extensive photographic evidence will help bring to life Lawrence's contemporary letters and recapture some of the excitement of his discoveries. Also covered are Lawrence's attitudes towards the people he met, and the key locations in Dinard mentioned in the letters. 
 

Dr Michael Griffiths, Dr. M.R. Lawrence, and Evangelical Christianity in the Lawrence Family

Mrs. Sarah Lawrence and her eldest son 'Bob' get a bad press as Christian fanatics. In letters to Charlotte Shaw, T.E. expressed his irritation at the way his mother had tried to ram her version of Biblical Christianity down his and Arnold's throats. While brothers Will and Frank were active members of the O.I.C.C.U., Bob was the only son who survived the war and shared his mother's convictions. The family had pulled out of St. Aldates in 1909, when Bob and Ned resigned from their role in the Church Lads Brigade. Sarah followed Bob out to the China Inland Mission's Paoning Memorial Hospital two years after he arrived there. He returned to China again for the C.M.S. 1932-5, making it a condition that they would accommodate his mother. The two were escaping from Communist incursions down the Yangtse in 1935 when they heard of T.E.'s death. From then on, Bob's life was overshadowed by his famous dead brother and dominated by his mother until her death in 1959, aged 98. On return to Britain their housing needs were met by prominent women friends of T.E.'s. We find that Bob and Sarah were nicer people than we may have thought!

Michael Griffiths joined the Overseas Missionary Fellowship of the China Inland Mission in 1957, serving for ten years in Japan. In 1969 he became its General Director, pastoring nine hundred missionaries throughout the Far East. From 1980 until retirement he served as Principal of a Theological College in London, and then as Professor of Mission Studies in Vancouver. His interest in the Lawrences started when he read Robert Graves' (1927) comment that T.E.'s mother "two years ago went off unconcernedly to end her days with a mission in Central China – but has recently been sent back home much against her will because of political troubles there." He discovered immediately that while Dr. M.R. Lawrence had been a member of the China Inland Mission from 1921-27, his mother is not mentioned at all in surviving archives. She does appear in Church Missionary Society archives, as Bob served as a locum in the Maechan Hospital 1932-35. Because of the interest in T.E.'s family, we know more about the life and character of Bob Lawrence than of most other China missionaries of that period.

J.G. Wilson, manager of Bumpus Bookshop in Oxford Street was bookseller to King George V. Under his guidance, Bumpus was the most fashionable London bookshop of its day. It was to Wilson that Lawrence turned when his friends failed to attract enough subscribers for a fine-press edition of Seven Pillars. Thereafter, the two remained in friendly contact.

Paul Helfer is a New York attorney specialising in literary property and copyright law. He has previously given papers at T. E. Lawrence Society symposia in Oxford and the United States. With Jennifer Lee, he taught the course in bibliography and book collecting at Brown University from 1993 to 1995. He is a member of the Grolier Club, the Bibliographical Society of America and the Royal Asiatic Society. His T.E. Lawrence collection has been exhibited at the Beinecke Library at Yale and the John Hay Library at Brown University.

This paper will explore the origins, purpose, history and significance of the international Schneider Trophy seaplane races from 1913 –31. It will describe the preparations for the 1929 race and the role of the Air Ministry - particularly the part played by Wing Commander Sydney Smith and Lawrence while they were both stationed at R.A.F. Cattewater (later renamed Mount Batten) in Plymouth. The paper will also reflect on the importance of this period in Lawrence’s life.

Pieter Shipster is an Assistant Director of Public Health in the National Health Service. He began a life-long interest in Lawrence while at school and this in part led to him taking a degree in Near and Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. He later spent four years in Saudi Arabia and has also travelled widely on the 'Lawrence Trail' in Jordan and Syria. He has been an active member of the T.E. Lawrence Society since its foundation twenty years ago. Pieter also has a strong interest in the First World War, aviation, and the origins of the Royal Air Force.

Joe Berton, The 'Lawrence of Arabia' photographs by Harry Chase, 1918-19

In 1918 the American journalist Lowell Thomas, accompanied by his photographer Harry Chase, briefly visited the Arab forces at Akaba. While there, Chase took his first photographs of Lawrence. The following year, Thomas and Chase came to London to present the illustrated 'travelogue' which launched the Lawrence of Arabia legend. To enhance the Lawrence section, Chase then took a further series of photographs. Among them are some of the best known images of 'Lawrence of Arabia'. Despite the fame of these images, relatively little has been published about their history or about Harry Chase.

Joe Berton has researched extensively in the Lowell Thomas archives at Marist College and in other major Lawrence collections in Britain and the US. He is currently working on a book of the Harry Chase photographs of Lawrence, Palestine and Arabia. He has lectured in the US on the Chase photographs, on the uniforms worn by the British troops in the Hejaz, and on Bedouin dress. He teaches art at Oak Park, Illinois, and is also a well known sculptor of military miniatures. Examples of his work are in collections in Europe, the US and the Middle East.

Bob Jackson, a frequent visitor to Jordan and an enthusiast for the Hedjaz Railway, will discuss the present state of the line and its rolling stock, and its future prospects.

Rails to the Arabian Desert, filmed by Nick Lera
[Provisional]

Nick Lera, who won the News Cameraman of the Year award in 1970, has specialised in making films about the world's steam railways. As the foremost specialist in the field he worked in southern Africa and Peru on the acclaimed BBC series Great Railway Journeys of The World. This film about the Hedjaz Railway, originally made for television, is now part of the series Nick Lera's World Steam Classics.

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Previous symposium, Oxford, 2004

Next symposium, Oxford, 2008