Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine - The World War I ...

T. E. LAWRENCE
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Thomas Edward Lawrence—always Ned to his family
—was born the second of five sons at Tremadoc, in
Wales, on August 16, 1888 (Napoleon's birthday), of
an Anglo-Irish father and a Highland Scottish mother.
He was educated at the Oxford High School for Boys,
where he was already developing "a passionate
absorption in the past: in heraldry, arms and armour,
monumental brasses, castles, ruins, church architecture,
old coins, and every fragment of brick or pottery which
might throw light on the social history and ways of
living of mankind". 1 He went on to Jesus College,
Oxford, and gained a scholarship at Magdalen College
which enabled him, under the famous archaeologistarabist,
D. G. Hogarth, to follow his bent in the Near and
Middle East. In November 1914 he was appointed to
the Intelligence Department of the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force, Cairo. The author, seven years his senior,
had preceded him there by ten years, of which he had
served five in the Egyptian Government and five as
Oriental Secretary to the British Agency, latterly under
Lord Kitchener. By the time of Lawrence's arrival
Great Britain, in retaliation for Turkish German-urged
hostility, had declared Egypt (of which Turkey had been
suzerain) a British Protectorate. The title of the Egyptian
sovereign, Khedive, had been raised to Sultan; that of
the British Representative from Agent and Consul-
Général to High Commissioner, his residence from
1 Letters of T. E. Lawrence. Edited by David Garnett, p. 39.
vii