Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East

I have been stung by T. E. Lawrence's legend, myth and enigma ever since my Father bundled myself, Brother and Mother together explaining that he had just seen the newly opened film Lawrence of Arabia while on a business trip. That very next weekend we went down to Hollywood to see the three plus hour movie (I was bored to tears). Being surprised and seeing my Father's enthusiasm I began to read more about Lawrence and World War One and the Arab Revolt. I saw the film several more times over that year and began what has been a lifelong hobby as I have collected books, articles and research on LAWRENCE. So anytime there is a new Lawrence biography I am pleased in the expectation that others too will discover this unique, flawed and mysterious man.This month we have the release of Scott Anderson's new book LAWRENCE IN ARABIA which for some reason felt it important to replace the word OF with the word IN. And although I have some concerns with some of Anderson's characterizations and his depiction of Lawrence especially in his post war life I think the book is a tremendously good read that takes on a much broader scope than just being a Lawrence biography.Anderson gives us a broader picture of how the Arab Revolt and Lawrence's roll tied into other World War I campaigns. There is a good section on how Lawrence and others proposed early in the war that the British attack the Ottoman Empire (who controlled the Middle East) at Alexandretta (near Aleppo which is much in the news today). But instead Winston Chruchill and the British war planners attacked Gallipoli resulting and a lost opportunity and a crushing defeat. If Alexandretta had been captured and the Ottoman Empire split in two there may have been no need for an Arab revolt.The book tries to be a biography of Lawrence asking how did Lawrence do it (answer no one was looking) and three others: Curt Prufer a German spy who tries to get Arabs to attack the Suez Canal, Aaron Aaronsohn the Jewish Zionist who along with his sister set up pro-British spy ring in Palestine, and William Yale who working for Standard Oil traveled the Middle East. The problem with these three other individuals with the possible exception of Aaronsohn is that they are at best interesting footnotes except that they do help expand the readers understanding of people and events beyond the scope of the Lawrence story. And although I liked Anderson's structure I thought the Aaronsohn story was better told in Ronald Florence's 2007 book LAWRENCE AND AARONSOHN, T.E. Lawrence, Aaron Aaronshon, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Anderson quotes Florence in several of the Aaronshon sections). As to Prufer and Yale I don't recall ever hearing about them before this book.Anderson's book justifiably spends a lot of time discussing the Sykes/Picot treaty between Britain and France and the person of Mark Sykes who was a major political player and is a major character in the book. Much more so than even Aaronshon. His personal and political story really is what the book's subtitle is about.... Deceit... Imperial Folly... and the making of the modern Middle East. Add Sykes/Picot with the Balfour Declaration and you have the unbelievable colonialism arrogance that Lawrence opposed in his support of an independent Arab nation. What the Arab's hoped to gain by their revolt.This brings me to a point in Anderson's book that really disturbed me when I read it. The fact that Anderson calls Lawrence out as a TRAITOR. This on pages 270-271, "....in any wartime army at any point in history - The divulging of a secret treaty to a third party was considered a consummate act of treason, one sure to win the offender a long prison sentence if not an appointment with a firing squad. Yet a some point during those early days of February in Wejh, Lawrence took Faisal aside and did precisely that, revealing to him both the existence and salient details of Sykes-Picot." No one doubts that Lawrence at this time knew of the treaty but I am hard pressed to see any evidence that Lawrence was a traitor. There are many other numerous explanations about how and when Faisal first found out about the treaty. If Lawrence was in fact a traitor I would have thought the French at the very least would have pressed the point with their British allies. I don't believe any other biographer has made a point of this issue. Anderson then even ends his book in the Epilogue by saying, "Everything T.E. Lawrence had fought for, schemed for, arguably betrayed his country for, turned to ashes....." This is a heavy handed indictment. The interesting thing about Lawrence is that many things about him are elusive and will always remain a matter of conjecture. But I for one feel Anderson has gone over the top on this claim. (Much the way prior biographers have made the point that Lawrence was a homosexual. No one will really know for sure but then does it matter.)Lastly, I take exception to Anderson's brief depiction of Lawrence in the Epilogue diagnosing Lawrence as having had Post-traumatic stress disorder. Anderson further says, " ...it is hard to escape the image of a sad and reclusive man, his circle of friends and acquaintances steadily dwindling to a mere handful...".No doubt Lawrence had a unique and difficult personality to understand. How many Britain's would turn away from being knighted by their King during the actual ceremony? None before Lawrence. John Mack in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, THE PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER: The Life of T.E. Lawrence (1976) devoted a whole book to doing a psychological study of Lawrence (One of the best books on Lawrence). In Michael Korda's recent book, HERO: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia (2010) Korda paints a more convincing picture than PTSD where Lawrence having sought fame, having become a celebrity as big as say Diana today, found he did not like living with fame. Rather than leverage his fame like most people would be expected to do Lawrence hid from it. I always thought the fact that he grew up keeping the secret that he was illegitimate in class contentious Britain that he was a pretender. The work Lawrence did after the war was never going to be heroic...the stuff of headlines.... But he was an intellectual who wrote two books and translated others. The letters he wrote were long and interesting and send to a wide circle of acquaintances yielding who collections of text. Yes, Lawrence was not like the rest of us... and that is why his legend, myth and enigma endure.In Anderson's Acknowledgments at the end of his book Anderson gives high recognition to Jeremy Wilson whose authorized biography, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1990) and says, "While I respectfully disagree with Mr. Wilson on several aspects of Lawrence's actions in Arabia. I am deeply indebted to the astounding amount of scholarly research he has done on Lawrence......" If you're a fan of all things Lawrence you no doubt know that Jeremy Wilson and his wife Nichole own Castle Hill Press. They have been publishing fine collector quality books by Lawrence for some twenty years. I own several of these the two most recent being THE MINT and BOATS FOR THE RAF 1929 - 1935. I recommend the Wilson's work to you as well as Wilson's T.E. Lawrence Studies page on internet. (Here he also does a good power point presentation covering the historical accuracy of the movie.)For those who like and collect things Lawrence I want to also mention a book I found very well published and presented. It is in part what one might term a small coffee table book. It is Joseph Berton's T.E. LAWRENCE AND THE ARAB REVOLT (2011.Lawrence is now but a drifting bit of sand blowing across the landscape of a land and people he loved that today is fractured by human intolerance. He became the medieval knight he dreamed of becoming. And I think that is what drew my Father to Lawrence.

An excellent history that helps illuminate an enigmatic figure, it veers off the rails at a few points; to name but two: a tirade against the mindlessness of the British High Command during the war (we get it after the first paragraph) and another on the jingoism of the time and how biased it was to assume that the Arabs in the Middle East weren't capable of ruling themselves in a just, democratic fashion, as effectively as Westerners. Had the author written the last analysis in, say, 1920, he might be forgiven this magnanimous, politically-correct presumption, but he's lived the century since, well through the icy Arab 'spring' to understand differently of these make-believe states. The political culture of the Levant and Magreb that still resonate with frightful events draws on a long set of experiences that preceded the brief Eurpoean foray into the Near East by many centuries. This is what many modern historians fail to consider and where the author, Scott Anderson fails as well. The 'betrayal' of Arab nationalism that others below speak of and the author alludes to, was a movement as much an invention of Europeans and the byproduct of romantics such as Lawrence, as modern Greek nationalism was of Byron & Co. (not to diminish the suffering of these subject peoples in the slightest). In the case of the Muslim subjects of the Sultan, there wasn't as such suppressed national identity (that in many cases had not yet formed) as submission to the recognized Caliph, Defender of the Faithful; for Muslims it was at its core, a truly pan-national polity. Lawrence embodies, as did Byron, the same jingoism of the times as they saw themselves the necessary 'prophets' of revolution (in Lawrence's own words) that the objects of their affections seemed 'incapable' of producing themselves.The author does reveal more about Lawrence, delving into his true nature more than most other works but I'm left no closer understanding the man's seemingly contradictory nature. Lawrence condemns the most horrific aspects of war and when given an opportunity, sadistically indulges in the same bestiality. Appalled by the lies around him, he then concocts his own deceits when sending dispatches about his Arab allies. He manipulates many around him but is often described as aloof and socially withdrawn; combined with indisputably extraordinary academic talents, there are hints perhaps, in contemporary understanding, of the Aspberger's end of autistic spectrum disorder. It only adds to the strange psycho-sexual jumble; there is a distinct self-loathing manifested in the context of a not-so-hidden but mostly unrequited homosexual sexual predilection and a masochistic pursuit of humiliation and pain. Eschewing all honors Britain wishes to bestow, he spends the final 15 years of his life as an anonymous enlisted man serving in a military he clearly loathes, working for an Imperial system he so deftly worked to undermine. But as clever as he was in his arena, those authorities around him were more so (despite the author's attempt to paint them irredeemably inept at all times). They used whatever he achieved to their ends, and left him bereft of any lasting achievements.The other fascinating characters who influence events fare no better in the end, meeting their ends by accidental death (Aronsohn), assassination (The hapless Djemal Pasha), or after pursuit of new illusions and dissipation (Prüfer).The Hashemites, unable to rally a constituency in Arabia beyond tiny Hejaz and Nejd, soon fall to competing ibn Sauds. The author attributes this outcome, at least in part, to a vague rapprochement with the Zionists; it is a stretch here too, as the ibn Saud clan had been allied with the violently fundamentalist Wahabbis for better than a century and while on the payroll of British India, finally wrest control of Mecca and Medina. In an odd turn, the British Raj thus engineers a platform for Islamism centered on the Islamic holy cities, precisely as hoped for by the Imperial German agents in this book, Prüfer and von Oppenheim.Of note, the most unlikely victor in all of this are the Zionists, who without an army or a geographical base, create something lasting. It has become fashionable to bash Zionists (in the same way old time anti-Jewish sentiments were manifest) but the first decades of the 20th century saw a profound reshuffling of populations, away from polyglot empires and into religiously uniform, 'cleansed' ethnic polities. In a move toward 'nationalism' fostered by the West, Turkey and Greece became prime examples, trading (or in the case of the former, massacring) populations to achieve this. The Arab states of the Middle East were no exception, where Jewish habitation dating to pre-Islamic & classical times are now extinct and intentionally forgotten while Christians are in the process of experiencing the same fate. Yet Israel, home to most of these exiled eastern Jews, is the obsession of malign historical revisionists, who excoriate it as the only 'authentically artificial' creation of the era.

A very good book.I was interested in Lawrence and in imperial folly, but not so interested in Middle East and WWI history. However, this well-written book kept me fascinated and informed on all four topics.I was continually amused by Lawrence. And continually horrified at the idiotic, arrogant and inhuman actions of the "great empires" during this time. I often burst out laughing during the relentless lists of official absurdities.There are so many great quotes. Here's one almost at random:"In just four months in the war theater, [Lawrence] had watched as Britain's best hope for an early victory over the Turks [an assault on Alexandretta, Syria] was shelved for no better reason than politics and institutional inertia; in its place the 'great thinkers' had come up with Gallipoli. From what the Oxford scholar had seen, military culture was a world of hidebound careerists looking for knighthood or their next medal, and of underlings loath to question the powerful, with countless dying as a result."...Every day he saw raw battlefield reports... and these told a tale of staggering incompetence and callousness: of soldiers ordered to stay in formation as they advanced over open ground toward enemy machine-gun nests,.... Other junior-ranked men had access to this information too... but most of these were aspirants to the system, willing cogs in the vast, dumb meat-grinding machinery that none dared acknowledge as such." [The book says nearly a quarter million British troops died uselessly at Gallipoli.]Another gem:"... The French military ligation in Cairo had been temporarily recalled to France and, in long-standing military tradition among the European powers, the occasion was marked by the liberal disbursement of medals and honorifics. Quite inexplicably, considering his consistent efforts to thwart French ambitions in the region, the outgoing legation had selected Lawrence for the Légion d'Honneur, one of France's highest awards. Compounding their error, the following year they awarded him the Croix de Guerre avec palme.... with his profound disdain for such things, Lawrence either threw them away or never bothered to collect them. He made an exception in the case of the Croix de Guerre; after the war ... he found amusement in placing the medal around the neck of a friend's dog and parading it through the streets of Oxford."

A truly fascinating tale: History that reads like an epic novel, filled with vivid (if flawed) characters, momentous events (World War I, treaties large and small, betrayals (largely large)) and a collision of cultures that continues to this day. Must of the action is seen through the eyes of three twenty-somethings: the American William Yale (the bluest of New York blue bloods who had had to leave the eponymous college when his father suddenly went bust), the British T.E. Lawrence (an eccentric archeologist/scholar) and the bed-hopping German civil servant Kurt Prufer. All three became more or less accidental spies (and Lawrence an accidental military officer despite zero military training), and in their ways were far superior, in terms of character, than the governments they wound up representing. A fourth major character, the somewhat older Arron Aaronson, probably had as much to do with creating the state of Israel as anyone--and is worthy of a book all by himself. This, too, of course, represented yet one more betrayal of Arabs who has been promised independence in return for fighting the Turks (the British promise, any way) and just because they had a right, as humans, to self-determination (the American promise).There are no governments that come off especially well in this book. (When have they ever?) In the worst of the worst Derby, it's a really close run thing between the French and the British. On the one hand, the arrogant greed of the French is something of a thing of beauty: They simply considered a major part of the Turkish Arab lands to be theirs by right: The loot to which they were entitled for having fought the Germans on the Western front. For their part the British had promised the Arab lands to the Arab people first, then quickly (and secretly) agreed that half of it should go to France, then further promised a large chunk of the French part to the nascent Israel, lying to all and sundry in the name of expedience. What made British government policy perhaps worse than the French was the British pretense (or self-delusion) that they were spreading civilization, an absurd hypocrisy that even the French and Germans didn't stoop to. For its part, the American government comes across not so so much as malevolent but as uninformed, long on idealistic rhetoric, and utterly lacking in any willingness to make the commitment necessary to bring their high-flown words into action. By 1919, the Arabs were crying out for American leadership--a cry that went unanswered. In all, a sad and frustrating tale, but a lesson that remains a fresh as today's news headlines. I couldn't put it down.

Amazing book. Highly recommend

If you are a naïf, a tyro or, a noob, of Middle Eastern history, this is a good book on which to begin. The bookhelps you understand who the players are in the grand scheme of things and focuses on those seeminglyperipheral lower tier characters that had small parts with big ambitions. Empires are opportunists and WWIwas the perfect time to carve up the Middle East by the major players on the killing fields.The structure of the book reminds me of screenplay treatment for an epic movie. The author takes you backand forth between the players, who seemingly were of little consequence, but all had an endgame in mind fortheir country and for themselves.There is no doubt that T E Lawrence is the central character and the other 4 players serve to act as ad hocrepresentatives of each principle country involved. There are also some smaller players, just as important, butthe large scope of this book had to make some trade-offs on some of those seemingly important players; likethe Turkish General who later became the man who secularized Turkey.The 5 players are Lawrence; a true believer in Arab statehood and working against everyone else’s interests.He actually went so far as to provide crucial British and allied secrets to the very man he was supposed to bemanipulating.An American who went to the Middle East working for Standard Oil and the American government, then stillneutral, at the same time, and essentially as a spy for both. If anyone is the least influential on the Middle Eastproceedings it is this gentleman; but he was ambitious.There is a German spy whose incredible deep knowledge of Middle Eastern culture, along with his linguistictalents, was initially sent to the Middle East to foment Islamic Jihad against Germany’s foes.A Jewish Palestinian agronomist, a Zionist and a British spy, always being relegated to the back burner byJewish leaders due to his loud radical voice when most Conservative American Jews were not for anyhomeland anywhere. Also brother to a sister who ran a spy ring right under the Ottoman’s nose in Syria.An Ottoman Governor walking the line between all the nationalities involved, and meeting some of the otherplayer in this drama, as he ruled his section of the Ottoman Empire that also become a problem and issue ofmodern history, Syria.There are long chapters and smaller vignette sections as the story line is moved along. Some of the eventsare happening at the same time, others are not. There are some flashbacks, as well, to help re-establish themotivation of the character. Some of the 5 characters interact, albeit briefly, throughout the entire timeline andsome do not. What is of interest is the author reveals the opinions of those people, by those who do intersectwith each other.One of many intrigues was when the British thought the Germans were going to offer the Jews a homeland(and they were) and how it spurred the British to make their offer to the Jewish leaders to thwart the Germansfrom gaining their support and losing a valuable spy ring. It is just one of many stories that cogwheel this storyof war and empire-building. There are many fascinating revelations of bargaining, trading sides, lies, cloak anddagger and downright deceitful behaviors.If you are familiar with David Lean's film, 'Lawrence of Arabia', just about every situation in the film is coveredin this book and more. From having to decide the fate of men by shooting them himself to avoid tribal warfareor inexplicably wandering into a Turkish held town and being abused by the commander. Was he just beatenand torture...or was he raped?This is a relatively easy book to read, follow and digest. I think the author moves between the lines of historianand journalist but it certainly will give you a better perspective on the Middle East, then and now. It is far froma dry rendering of the Middle East front during WWI. If anything the book offers an overview, and some opinions,as to why the Middle East is where it is today as well as opinions on the featured players.I think this book can whet your appetite for more information on this sub-conflict of World War I and how a storyof Imperial Folly plays itself out through manipulation, outright lies and a traitor named...

As a life-long fan of David Lean's film masterpiece, "Lawrence of Arabia," I come to any book about T.E. Lawrence with high anticipation; as a reader of histories of World War One, I welcome any further addition to my bookshelf. This new book by Scott Anderson more than satisfied me on both counts. So true does Robert Bolt's screenplay echo in Anderson's writing, that I found myself writing quotes from the film in the margins throughout my recent reading of "Lawrence IN Arabia." While Anderson corrects the inaccurate chronology of the movie, he sustains a thoroughly balanced view of Lawrence himself, in all his shortcomings and in his stunningly significant achievements. As well, he holds British diplomacy and military policy throughout the Middle-Eastern phase of the Great War up to scathing, at times comically ironic, inspection. What Bolt did to create convincing political and military figures in a feature film, Anderson does in his discriminating prose.In choosing to portray a foursome of Westerners as representative players in the intrigues surrounding the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire, Anderson takes upon himself a challenging problem. With the storied T.E. Lawrence at center stage, Anderson shows how an American businessman and intelligence operative, a German spy, and a Jewish agronomist with Zionist ambitions played similar roles in shaping the byzantine network of decisions and actions which resulted in an Allied victory in the war and in diplomatic "agreements" which eventually gave birth to the Middle East of today.Lawrence himself personally interacted with the Zionist Aaron Aaronsohn and the American Standard Oil figure William Yale, and those confrontations are an excellent example of how Anderson's book works almost like a well-plotted novel, wherein each of these figures appears and reappears in the context of the war itself. As might be expected, the book's index has 105 entries for Lawrence himself, followed by 27 for Yale, 34 for the German Curt Prufer, and 23 for Aaronsohn. With the balance so heavily weighted in its coverage of the legendary Lawrence, the other three gain most of their reader's interest in terms of the legend. This structure works in most cases. Since Prufer and Lawrence never did meet, and since his scope diminishes as the book progresses, his interesting story as the sole Central Powers representative loses its edge for the reader. His plot line could probably have have been dispensed with.Nevertheless, this history is commanding in its storytelling and in the conclusions it reaches about European imperialism at play on the stage of the Muslim Middle East in time of war. As the British representative of its own peculiar brand of diplomacy, Mark Sykes (of the infamous Sykes-Picot Treaty) also stands out as a conspicuous player. Read how Anderson portrays him in a chapter titled "An Audacious Scheme." In recounting how the British were "selling everything twice" to their post-war Arab and French allies, he writes that Sykes had accumulated, in months of contradictory explanations, "an ever-growing corpus of half-truths and conflicting schemes that even he would soon begin having difficulty keeping straight."The subtitle of Anderson's book is "War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East." His dissection of the convoluted double-talk of Mark Sykes is only one example of how well he analyzes the "deceit, folly, and making" that were underway in 1914-1919. As to the war and its central warrior, Lawrence himself, this book stands tall with earlier Lawrence biographies such as "Hero" and "A Prince of Our Disorder." In chronicling his military genius in the desert war, Anderson provides astute observations about Lawrence's unconventional strategies; in chronicling Lawrence's deterioration from an optimistic leader to a more savage and despondent victim of war's own savageries, he provides a convincing and fair estimation of the man himself, and of the high price of public heroism.Something should be said about the excellent way in which this book presents its essential maps of the geography for this war. Using only the end-pages, this hardbound copy managed to provide a full 9 by 12 inch map of the Middle Eastern Front, a 9 by 6 inch map of the Syrian Theater, and two smaller maps of the opposing Arab and British "concepts" of the post-war Arab world. This is the way maps should be handled for histories of a war: one consistently easy location to consult, and on which to make notations.This book is well-documented and shows its years of preparation. In an age of television pundits and political personalities, it is a joy to read someone who is a scholar and digs in deep with his sources.

A big picture view and an enjoyable read of changes taking place in the Near East from the turn of the century through WW I. The Near East at the time was controlled by the Ottoman Empire out of Constantinople, though it was crumbling and threatened by the military and industrial might of the European powers. The Germans, a late arrival, hoped to gain influence by offering their assistance to the Turks in building a railroad from Constantinople, through Syria (and modern day Jordan), to Saudi Arabia. Then there was the quest for oil in the area by Standard Oil and the Americans (at a time when the British Navy was converting from coal to oil propulsion for its ships). Additionally there was the rise of Zionism for which many Jews hoped that Great Britain (already a presence in the area when it grabbed control of Egypt away from the Ottomans and thus incurred both Turkish and Egyptian wrath) would be able to sustain and protect a Jewish state in Palestine once the Ottoman Empire had been defeated. Scott Anderson possesses a broad an insightful historical perspective and tells this story through the lives of four young men -- an American, a German, a European Jew, and a Brit -- T. E. Lawrence. Anderson takes up their stories from their early days, providing us insights into their educational backgrounds and how they came to find themselves in the Near East, which enables us to better understand Lawrence's remarkable accomplishments in uniting the Arabs against the Ottoman Turks who found themselves on the losing side, in alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary, during WW I. The population of the Ottoman Empire at the time was approximately 75% Muslim (made up equally of Turks and Arabs with the Kurds forming a smaller segment), while the remainder included Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, and Jews. An interesting side note is that the United States did not make or declare war against the Ottoman Empire, as Woodrow Wilson concluded the Turks had not made war against the United States, hence it was the British, French, Italians, and Russians who pounced upon the Turks with the intent of carving up the waning Ottoman Empire to serve their own interests; certainly the Brits were the first in when a British led Indian Army seized the oil fields of southern Iraq in the spring of 1915 and then made their way up to Baghdad. This book is an engaging read for history buffs as well as for the casual first-time reader of the Near East.

Das Buch erzählt die Geschichte des Nahen Ostens im 1. Weltkrieg aus interessanter Perspektive. Nämlich jener von Akteuren der mittleren Führungsebene, die aufgrund der damaligen Kommunikationstechnologie heute kaum vorstellbaren Spielraum hatten. Zentrale Figur ist natürlich T. E. Lawrence. Weiters wird das Wirken des deutschen Agenten Dr. Curt Prüfer, des Standard Oil Angestellten und Diplomaten William Yale sowie des zionistischen Aktivisten bzw. britischen Spions Aaron Aaronsohn geschildert.Gelungene Verküpfung von politischer, Kriegs- und Diplomatiegeschichte, welche die heutigen Probleme in der Region verstehen hilft. Kernpunkte dieser Ursachengeschichte sind das kolonialistische Sykes–Picot Abkommen sowie die Balfour Deklaration. Erschütternd ist die Schilderung des Versagens der britischen Generäle und das damit verbundene Verheizen der Empire Truppen im Kampf gegen eine militärisch drittklassige Macht, das Osmanische Reich. Die britischen Rückschläge auf dem Schlachtfeld machten die Unterstützung des arabischen Aufstands unabdingbar.Gut geschriebenes Buch in ebenso gut verständlichem Englisch. Kaufempfehlung für jeden, der sich für die Biographie Lawrence' oder die Geschichte der Region interessiert.

The subtitle says it all: 'War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East'.The war was World War 1. The deceit and imperial folly marked the behaviour of the many empires fighting each other, and plotting against enemies and allies alike, across the Middle East. The Ottomans in Turkey, the French, the Russians but above all the British were being as devious as they were violent (and often incompetent) in the fighting.Long before the war was won, Britain was negotiating the distribution of the Arab territories the Ottomans would lose if they were beaten. They promised the Arabs a single, unified, independent Arab nation extending from the bottom of the Arabian peninsula to the borders of present-day Turkey. At the same time, they crew up the Sykes-Picot agreement with the French to divide up the northern end of that region, giving Jordan, Palestine and Iraq to Britain, Syria and Lebanon to France. And, finally, they promised Palestine to the Zionists for a Jewish homeland.Three promises made in secret to three different parties, incompatible with each other. And the seeds were sown of the terrible conflicts that beset the region to this day.But Scott Anderson doesn’t limit himself to the great powers fighting each other. In particular, he focuses on four extraordinary characters: T E Lawrence, the man we’ve come to know as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and who is the Lawrence of the book’s main title.His story is exceptional: an archaeologist fascinated by the region, an excellent linguist who mastered Arabic as he became an admirer of the Arabs, and a man without military training who transformed himself into an outstanding solider – but Anderson shows how he became increasingly disgusted about what war meant, and what he was doing in it, leaving him deeply depressed in his post-war years. Though it wasn’t just the fighting that left him traumatised, it was also the duplicity of the British Empire he was fighting for in what he came to think of as ‘the great loot’.Alongside Lawrence, we read about the German anthropologist and spy Curt Prüfer, who worked with the Turks and one of whose first agents (and sometime mistress) was Minna Weizmann, sister of the Zionist who would later become the first President of Israel.He, Chaim Weizmann, had to work with the support and opposition of Aaron Aaronson, brilliant agronomist, surprisingly effective spy, and a Zionist who slipped into the racist thinking that taints Israel today at its worst.And there was even an American, William Yale – and, yes, the name comes from the family that founded the university – an oilman and spy working first for Middle Eastern interests of the Standard Oil of New York, but later for the US State Department.And there is a superb cast of other characters. Djemal Pasha, the Turkish governor of Palestine, who could be both cruel and merciful, who could outmanoeuvre the British or fall for their simplest frauds. The Hashemite family from Mecca, who fought alongside Lawrence and believed British promises only to be betrayed by them later. And even Mark Sykes, of the Sykes-Picot agreement that carved up the Middle East, one of the least principled and most self-serving politicians it has been my pleasure to read about.Scott Anderson has a background in journalism. The book feels that way, pacy and compelling, a real page-turner. As entertaining as it’s informative.Well worth reading.

A beautifully written and fascinating look at this complex character - and this complex period in human history. A real page turner!

Like: the historical record is based on supporting information and fact, while the ‘change of characters’ within each Chapter, keeps the story line moving nicely. Dislike: the story line while focusing on Lawrence, minimizes some other characters simply touched on most briefly in the story. Pictures and maps also help in setting the scene. Overall this is a great read on a very turbulent, very confusing and very critical period in events that cascade to today.

Take a bow Scott Anderson. Mandatory reading for any middle east history buff. First book on Lawrence of Arabia and very satiating. Couldn't have been done better.