The events of early June as recounted in a letter to his family written on July 1, 1916

“The Reuter telegram on the revolt of the Sherif of Mecca I hope interested you. It has taken a year and a half to do, but now is going very well. It is so good to have helped a bit in making a new nation – and I hate the Turks so much that to see their own people turning on them is very grateful. I hope the movement increases, as it promises to do. You will understand how impossible it is for me to tell you what the work we do really consists of, for it is all this sort of thing. This revolt, if it succeeds, will be the biggest thing in the Near East since 1550 …

“I feel written out, for now I have two newspapers (both secret!) to edit, for the information of Governors and Governments, and besides heaps of writing to do:- and it is enough.”

T. E. Lawrence to his family (The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers, edited by M. R. Lawrence, published by Blackwell, 1954).

Lawrence returned to Cairo from Mesopotamia at the end of May.

On June 5, an attack on the Ottoman garrison at Medina by Ali and Feisal, two sons of Sherif Hussein, signalled the start of the Arab
Revolt. Five days later, on June 10, Sherif Hussein himself publicly proclaimed the Revolt in Mecca. On the same day, another son,
Abdullah, attacked Taif. Forces also attacked Jidda and other ports along the Red Sea coast.

On June 6, Lawrence produced the first edition of a new intelligence periodical for the Arab Bureau in Cairo. It would become known as the Arab Bulletin.