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Lawrence, T(homas) E(dward), called Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935)

British adventurer, soldier, and author, who coalesced the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Lawrence was born on August 15, 1888, in Tremadoc, Wales, and educated at the University of Oxford. In 1910 he joined a British Museum archaeological expedition to the ancient Hittite city of Carchemish (now Karkamis, Turkey), and subsequently travelled in the Sinai, where he learned Arabic. He described his experiences in The Wilderness of Zin (1915). At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Lawrence joined the British Military Intelligence Service in Cairo. From there he was sent with a British relief column to the Arab prince Faisal (later King Faisal I of Iraq) in the Hejaz (now in Saudi Arabia). Lawrence then worked among the Arabs in revolt against Turkish rule and, having been accepted as their military adviser, unified their armed forces and led them against the Turks. In 1918 Lawrence and Faisal triumphantly entered Damascus before the arrival of the British army. Lawrence participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, but was unsuccessful in his efforts to gain Arab independence.

From 1921 to 1922 he was attached to the Middle East division of the British Colonial Office, but then resigned his post and enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the name of J. H. Ross in an attempt to escape publicity. In 1923 he adopted the name T. E. Shaw and joined the tank corps. He rejoined the air force in 1925 and served as an enlisted man until 1935. On May 19 of that year, shortly after his discharge, he was killed in a motorcycle accident in Dorset. Among Lawrence's books are The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), an account of his adventures among the Arabs, and a condensed version of the same book, Revolt in the Desert (1927).