THE LAWRENCE MYTH
SIR,—The reply to your correspondents Chambers and Canning was anticipated some twenty-five years ago by the first Earl Wavell, FM, who wrote: He will always have his detractors, those who sneer at the 'Lawrence legend': who ascribe his successes with the Arabs to gold; who view the man as a charlatan in search of notoriety by seeming to seek obscurity; who regard his descent from colonel to private as evidence of some morbid nostalgie de la boue. They knew not the man. Those who did, even casually and sporadically, like myself, can answer for his greatness.
Much further evidence and opinion is of course available, a bookful in fact, but one more quotation, this time from Sir Winston Churchill, should suffice: I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time. I do not see his like elsewhere. I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like aeain King George V wrote to his brother, 'His name will live in history.' That is true. It will live in English letters: it will live in the annals of war: it will live in the traditions of the Royal Air Force, and in the legends of Arabia.
G. WREN HOWARD Chairman
Jonathan Cape Ltd., 30 Bedford Square, WC/
Previous page
