WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.259 I want you to close your eyes for a second. When 00:00:02.259 --> 00:00:05.240 I say the name Lawrence of Arabia, what do you 00:00:05.240 --> 00:00:08.160 see? Oh, it's always the same image. I'm willing 00:00:08.160 --> 00:00:11.400 to bet money you're seeing Peter O'Toole. You're 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:13.880 seeing those piercing blue eyes, the pristine 00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:16.899 white robes. Maybe he's standing on top of a 00:00:16.899 --> 00:00:19.359 derailed train in the desert, screaming into 00:00:19.359 --> 00:00:23.000 the wind. Yeah, it's pure cinema. It's the ultimate 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.839 romantic image. of the British adventurer. It 00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:28.000 is. It's an incredible image. It is the image, 00:00:28.100 --> 00:00:30.579 and it's a powerful one. But if you actually 00:00:30.579 --> 00:00:35.960 met T .E. Lawrence in, say, 1914... you probably 00:00:35.960 --> 00:00:37.880 would have looked right past him. Really? Oh, 00:00:37.880 --> 00:00:40.240 completely. You wouldn't see a 6 '2 movie star. 00:00:40.439 --> 00:00:43.100 You'd see a guy who was maybe 5 '5 on a good 00:00:43.100 --> 00:00:45.200 day with a head that looked slightly too big 00:00:45.200 --> 00:00:47.119 for his body, a high -pitched sort of giggly 00:00:47.119 --> 00:00:49.600 voice, and who was probably covered in dust from 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.700 digging in the dirt. That is a bit of a letdown 00:00:51.700 --> 00:00:53.479 from the movie poster. Well, that's the thing, 00:00:53.479 --> 00:00:56.840 isn't it? The reality of Lawrence is infinitely 00:00:56.840 --> 00:01:00.420 more complex and I think much, much darker than 00:01:00.420 --> 00:01:02.380 the Hollywood version. We are talking about a 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:06.459 classic hero here. We are talking about an illegitimate 00:01:06.459 --> 00:01:09.760 son. who spent his life trying to escape his 00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:12.739 own identity, a scholar who essentially invented 00:01:12.739 --> 00:01:15.420 modern insurgency warfare. And a man who ended 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:17.900 his life not as a general, but hiding under a 00:01:17.900 --> 00:01:20.939 fake name as a lowly mechanic in the Air Force. 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:23.359 Exactly. It's an absolutely bizarre trajectory. 00:01:23.620 --> 00:01:25.780 It is. You have the uncrowned king of Arabia 00:01:25.780 --> 00:01:28.340 on one hand, and then this guy named Shaw cleaning 00:01:28.340 --> 00:01:31.159 oil spills on the other. And today we are going 00:01:31.159 --> 00:01:33.579 to try to figure out how those two people are 00:01:33.579 --> 00:01:36.890 actually. the same man it's a huge puzzle it 00:01:36.890 --> 00:01:39.150 really is we have a massive stack of sources 00:01:39.150 --> 00:01:42.629 here his own writings specifically seven pillars 00:01:42.629 --> 00:01:46.150 of wisdom and his barracks memoir the mint plus 00:01:46.150 --> 00:01:48.609 the biographies that expose the secrets he tried 00:01:48.609 --> 00:01:50.870 so hard to keep buried and we need to look at 00:01:50.870 --> 00:01:53.939 the military side of this too Because often the 00:01:53.939 --> 00:01:56.519 romance of it all completely overshadows the 00:01:56.519 --> 00:01:58.519 fact that Lawrence was a ruthless and brilliant 00:01:58.519 --> 00:02:01.319 strategist. I mean, he changed how wars are fought. 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:04.140 But to get there, to understand why he did what 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:05.780 he did in the desert, you have to go back. You 00:02:05.780 --> 00:02:07.640 have to understand where he came from. You do. 00:02:08.560 --> 00:02:10.979 And his origin story is basically a Victorian 00:02:10.979 --> 00:02:13.240 soap opera. This is the Chapman secret, right? 00:02:13.259 --> 00:02:15.219 I was reading about his childhood and it honestly 00:02:15.219 --> 00:02:17.319 felt like the whole family was part of a witness 00:02:17.319 --> 00:02:20.319 protection program. That's not far off, you know. 00:02:20.650 --> 00:02:23.469 He was born Thomas Edward Lawrence in Wales in 00:02:23.469 --> 00:02:27.310 1888. But Lawrence wasn't his real name. It wasn't 00:02:27.310 --> 00:02:29.830 his father's name. Right. His father was Sir 00:02:29.830 --> 00:02:33.509 Thomas Chapman, an Anglo -Irish baronet, a landowner 00:02:33.509 --> 00:02:36.270 with a lot of money, a title, a wife, and four 00:02:36.270 --> 00:02:39.650 daughters back in Ireland. But Sir Thomas fell 00:02:39.650 --> 00:02:42.349 in love with the family governess, Sarah Jenner. 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:45.689 The classic governess scandal. It was social 00:02:45.689 --> 00:02:48.240 suicide in that era. I mean... absolute and total 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:50.840 ruin if it got out. So Thomas Chapman literally 00:02:50.840 --> 00:02:53.520 abandoned his estate, his title, his wife, his 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:55.979 entire previous life, and ran away with Sarah. 00:02:56.180 --> 00:02:57.800 And they just invent a new name for themselves. 00:02:58.139 --> 00:03:00.219 They adopted the name Lawrence, pretended to 00:03:00.219 --> 00:03:02.819 be married, and had five sons. T .E. Lawrence, 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:05.599 or Ned, as the family called him, was the second 00:03:05.599 --> 00:03:07.780 eldest. So they are living a lie from the moment 00:03:07.780 --> 00:03:11.479 he's born. A daily lie. And that shapes everything. 00:03:11.900 --> 00:03:14.939 His mother was intensely religious, but also 00:03:14.939 --> 00:03:17.300 deeply insecure about their social position. 00:03:17.599 --> 00:03:20.000 They moved constantly when the boys were young. 00:03:20.379 --> 00:03:24.360 Scotland, Isle of Wight, France, Jersey, always 00:03:24.360 --> 00:03:26.439 renting, always a bit isolated. Because they 00:03:26.439 --> 00:03:28.439 couldn't risk anyone digging too deep. Exactly. 00:03:28.439 --> 00:03:30.099 They couldn't really have guests over because 00:03:30.099 --> 00:03:31.960 people might ask too many questions about their 00:03:31.960 --> 00:03:34.710 background. Lawrence eventually found out the 00:03:34.710 --> 00:03:36.969 truth when he was a boy, and biographers argue 00:03:36.969 --> 00:03:38.870 this created a massive chip on his shoulder. 00:03:39.110 --> 00:03:41.610 He was technically illegitimate in a society 00:03:41.610 --> 00:03:44.270 that valued lineage above all else. It seems 00:03:44.270 --> 00:03:46.469 like he compensated for that by trying to be 00:03:46.469 --> 00:03:49.189 better than everyone else, harder, smarter, tougher. 00:03:49.729 --> 00:03:51.830 I was looking at what he did as a teenager, and 00:03:51.830 --> 00:03:53.689 it's just obsessive. Oh, it's beyond obsessive. 00:03:53.710 --> 00:03:56.229 Most kids ride bikes for fun. Lawrence was riding. 00:03:56.449 --> 00:03:58.889 Well, tell us about the distances. It's masochistic. 00:03:59.069 --> 00:04:02.000 That's the only word for it. Hmm. When he was 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.240 a student at Oxford, he didn't just study history. 00:04:04.319 --> 00:04:07.259 He physically threw himself into it. In 1908, 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:10.439 he decided to write his thesis on crusader castles. 00:04:10.759 --> 00:04:13.159 So he took his bicycle to France. And this wasn't 00:04:13.159 --> 00:04:16.319 just a trip around the block. He cycled 2 ,400 00:04:16.319 --> 00:04:19.959 miles in a single summer. On a 1908 bicycle, 00:04:20.100 --> 00:04:23.540 that's a single -speed heavy steel frame on what 00:04:23.540 --> 00:04:25.720 must have been mostly dirt roads. Exactly. It's 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:27.740 brutal. And he was doing it on a shoestring budget. 00:04:28.170 --> 00:04:31.170 He lived on bread, milk, and grapes. He'd sleep 00:04:31.170 --> 00:04:33.829 in haystacks. He pushed his body to the absolute 00:04:33.829 --> 00:04:36.490 breaking point, documenting these castles, measuring 00:04:36.490 --> 00:04:38.910 the walls, drawing the plans. He wrote letters 00:04:38.910 --> 00:04:41.370 home describing the exhaustion like it was a 00:04:41.370 --> 00:04:43.350 badge of honor. He was a test. He was always 00:04:43.350 --> 00:04:45.470 a test. He was testing the limits of his own 00:04:45.470 --> 00:04:47.649 will. And he didn't stop with France. He went 00:04:47.649 --> 00:04:49.269 to the Middle East before the war, right? He 00:04:49.269 --> 00:04:52.470 did. The next year, 1909, he went to Syria and 00:04:52.470 --> 00:04:55.310 Palestine. And this time he walked. He walked. 00:04:55.370 --> 00:04:58.699 Over 1 ,000 miles. Through the summer heat, getting 00:04:58.699 --> 00:05:01.339 shot at by locals, getting robbed, contracting 00:05:01.339 --> 00:05:04.740 a nasty case of malaria. But he kept going because 00:05:04.740 --> 00:05:06.779 he wanted to prove a point about military architecture. 00:05:07.160 --> 00:05:09.160 He was arguing that the Crusaders didn't just 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:11.920 copy Eastern designs, but actually brought Western 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.639 influence with them. But looking back, this wasn't 00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:16.500 just an architecture trip. This was training. 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:19.100 He was learning the terrain. He was learning 00:05:19.100 --> 00:05:22.560 the terrain, the language, and the people. And 00:05:22.560 --> 00:05:25.579 that's what really set him apart. After Oxford, 00:05:26.079 --> 00:05:28.639 He got a job at an archaeological dig site in 00:05:28.639 --> 00:05:31.339 Kharkhamish, Syria, working for the British Museum 00:05:31.339 --> 00:05:34.079 under a man named Leonard Woolley. And this is 00:05:34.079 --> 00:05:37.279 crucial? Absolutely crucial. For three years, 00:05:37.399 --> 00:05:40.120 he lived in the Middle East. He wasn't in a British 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:43.139 officer's club sipping gin. He was managing 200 00:05:43.139 --> 00:05:46.819 local workers, settling blood feuds, dealing 00:05:46.819 --> 00:05:49.480 with Ottoman officials, and wearing local clothes 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:51.180 because, you know, they were just more comfortable. 00:05:51.279 --> 00:05:53.500 He wasn't a tourist. He was embedded. Deeply 00:05:53.500 --> 00:05:56.379 embedded. And he formed a very close bond with 00:05:56.379 --> 00:05:58.519 one of the workers there, a guy named Dahum. 00:05:58.699 --> 00:06:01.060 Tell me about him. His full name was Salim Ahmed, 00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:03.680 known as Dahum. He was a young water boy at the 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:05.980 site. Lawrence took him under his wing, taught 00:06:05.980 --> 00:06:08.779 him to read and write. Dahum taught Lawrence 00:06:08.779 --> 00:06:11.889 the nuances of local Arabic dialects. They were 00:06:11.889 --> 00:06:14.629 reportedly inseparable. Lawrence even brought 00:06:14.629 --> 00:06:16.829 him back to Oxford for a visit, which absolutely 00:06:16.829 --> 00:06:19.850 scandalized his very proper mother. This relationship 00:06:19.850 --> 00:06:21.970 is really the emotional anchor for everything 00:06:21.970 --> 00:06:24.889 that comes later in his life. So fast forward 00:06:24.889 --> 00:06:28.970 to 1914. The war is looming. The British military 00:06:28.970 --> 00:06:32.110 suddenly realizes, hey, we have this quirky little 00:06:32.110 --> 00:06:35.069 five foot five guy who knows Syria like the back 00:06:35.069 --> 00:06:36.529 of his hand. And he speaks the language. And 00:06:36.529 --> 00:06:39.129 they recruit him, but not as a soldier initially. 00:06:39.759 --> 00:06:42.259 As a spy? Well, what do you need to cover? Yeah. 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:44.939 The British were terrified that the Ottoman Empire, 00:06:45.220 --> 00:06:48.339 which was allied with Germany, would attack Egypt 00:06:48.339 --> 00:06:51.300 and the Suez Canal. That was the lifeline of 00:06:51.300 --> 00:06:53.680 the empire. And to do that, the Turks would have 00:06:53.680 --> 00:06:56.399 to cross the Negev Desert. Right. And the British 00:06:56.399 --> 00:06:59.019 military had zero good maps of that area. They 00:06:59.019 --> 00:07:01.120 needed to know where the water was. You can't 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:02.899 march an army without water. It's the single 00:07:02.899 --> 00:07:05.279 most critical piece of intelligence. So how do 00:07:05.279 --> 00:07:07.480 you map enemy territory without starting a war? 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:09.220 You pretend you're looking for something else. 00:07:09.560 --> 00:07:12.279 They set up a fake archaeological survey called 00:07:12.279 --> 00:07:15.040 the Wilderness of Zin Survey. The cover story 00:07:15.040 --> 00:07:16.860 was that they were looking for the path of the 00:07:16.860 --> 00:07:19.120 biblical Israelites. That is incredibly cynical 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:21.680 and brilliant. It's perfect, isn't it? We're 00:07:21.680 --> 00:07:23.600 just here for the Bible. Pay no attention to 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:26.439 the surveying equipment. So Lawrence and Willie 00:07:26.439 --> 00:07:29.819 were sent in. They did write a legitimate archaeology 00:07:29.819 --> 00:07:32.680 book from it, but the real job was mapping every 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:36.339 well, every oasis, and calculating the flow rates. 00:07:36.600 --> 00:07:38.740 So when the war started, they knew. They knew 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:41.420 everything. Lawrence knew exactly how many troops 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:43.920 the Ottomans could move across that desert because 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:45.800 he knew exactly how many gallons of water the 00:07:45.800 --> 00:07:48.379 wells provided per day. It wasn't guesswork. 00:07:48.579 --> 00:07:52.420 It was math. So World War I breaks out. Lawrence 00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:54.360 is commissioned as a junior officer and sent 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:57.139 to Cairo. He joins the Arab Bureau. And I get 00:07:57.139 --> 00:07:59.139 the sense he did not fit in with the regular 00:07:59.139 --> 00:08:01.819 army types. He was a nightmare for a traditional 00:08:01.819 --> 00:08:04.699 sergeant major. He was sloppy. He often forgot 00:08:04.699 --> 00:08:07.819 to salute. He wore his uniform incorrectly. He 00:08:07.819 --> 00:08:09.920 was an intellectual, an academic, in a room full 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:12.800 of career soldiers who valued discipline and 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:15.339 spit shine over everything else. But he was useful. 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:18.240 Immensely useful. He spent his time interviewing 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:20.699 Turkish prisoners, drawing maps, and analyzing 00:08:20.699 --> 00:08:23.600 the political situation. He was a walking encyclopedia 00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:25.959 of the region. And the political situation was 00:08:25.959 --> 00:08:28.279 that the Ottoman Empire was vulnerable to an 00:08:28.279 --> 00:08:30.860 internal revolt. Right. The Turks ruled over 00:08:30.860 --> 00:08:33.200 millions of Arabs who were starting to feel a 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:35.840 sense of nationalism. The British wanted to exploit 00:08:35.840 --> 00:08:38.279 that. They wanted the Arabs to rebel against 00:08:38.279 --> 00:08:40.980 the Turks to create a distraction, a second front. 00:08:41.179 --> 00:08:43.940 And they find a leader for this revolt. They 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:46.100 make a deal with the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein 00:08:46.100 --> 00:08:49.220 bin Ali. He was willing to lead a revolt if the 00:08:49.220 --> 00:08:51.340 British promised him an independent Arab state 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:54.980 afterwards, covering the Hejaz, Syria, Mesopotamia, 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:58.360 modern -day Iraq. So the revolt starts in 1916, 00:08:58.539 --> 00:09:01.740 but it goes wrong. It's stalling. The British 00:09:01.740 --> 00:09:03.580 are thinking about pulling the plug. Yeah, it's 00:09:03.580 --> 00:09:05.919 not going well at all. The Arabs have some success, 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:09.029 but they're getting bogged down. And so they 00:09:09.029 --> 00:09:11.070 send Lawrence down to the Ejaz region to see 00:09:11.070 --> 00:09:12.990 if the whole thing is salvageable. This feels 00:09:12.990 --> 00:09:15.190 like the moment where the academic becomes the 00:09:15.190 --> 00:09:17.549 man of action. This is where Lawrence of Arabia 00:09:17.549 --> 00:09:20.269 is born. This is the turning point. He goes down 00:09:20.269 --> 00:09:23.389 there, and his job is to find a leader, a real 00:09:23.389 --> 00:09:26.350 leader who can unite the tribes. He met Hussein's 00:09:26.350 --> 00:09:28.970 other sons, Ali, Abdullah, but he didn't really 00:09:28.970 --> 00:09:31.909 click with them. Not the right fit. No. Then 00:09:31.909 --> 00:09:34.990 he rode inland to meet Prince Faisal. Lawrence 00:09:34.990 --> 00:09:36.870 describes the first meeting in Seven Pillars 00:09:36.870 --> 00:09:39.070 as very cinematic. He walks into the tent, and 00:09:39.070 --> 00:09:41.490 Faisal, this tall, regal figure, looks at him 00:09:41.490 --> 00:09:44.429 and asks, And do you like our place here in Wadi 00:09:44.429 --> 00:09:47.429 Safra? And Lawrence's reply is incredible. He 00:09:47.429 --> 00:09:50.250 just says, Well, but it is far from Damascus. 00:09:50.750 --> 00:09:54.870 Wow. That is a bold opening line. Nice place, 00:09:54.970 --> 00:09:57.350 but we have a long way to go. It set the tone 00:09:57.350 --> 00:10:01.090 immediately. Lawrence saw in Faisal the charisma 00:10:01.659 --> 00:10:04.379 and the vision required to hold the disparate 00:10:04.379 --> 00:10:07.399 tribes together. But tactically, the Arabs were 00:10:07.399 --> 00:10:09.360 failing. How so? They were trying to fight the 00:10:09.360 --> 00:10:11.240 Turks head on. They were trying to capture the 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:14.080 holy city of Medina. The British military manuals 00:10:14.080 --> 00:10:16.379 all said the same thing. Capture the city. Destroy 00:10:16.379 --> 00:10:18.659 the enemy army. And Lawrence looks at this and 00:10:18.659 --> 00:10:21.679 says, That is suicide. Worse than suicide. He 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:23.720 says it's counterproductive. This is his great 00:10:23.720 --> 00:10:26.200 strategic insight. He argued, if we take Medina, 00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:27.759 what do we get? We get a city full of hungry 00:10:27.759 --> 00:10:30.059 civilians that we have to feed. We get a stationary 00:10:30.059 --> 00:10:31.899 target that the Turks can just counterattack. 00:10:32.039 --> 00:10:35.019 So his plan was, leave the enemy alone. Leave 00:10:35.019 --> 00:10:36.879 them in Medina. Let them sit there. Let them 00:10:36.879 --> 00:10:41.980 rot. But, and this is the key, destroy the railway 00:10:41.980 --> 00:10:44.659 line that feeds them. The Hejaz Railway. Exactly. 00:10:45.240 --> 00:10:47.159 Came all the way from Damascus. It was their 00:10:47.159 --> 00:10:50.070 only supply line. Lawrence realized that if they 00:10:50.070 --> 00:10:52.129 constantly blew up the tracks and the bridges, 00:10:52.309 --> 00:10:54.649 the Turks would have to spread thousands of soldiers 00:10:54.649 --> 00:10:57.590 all along the line just to guard it. It turns 00:10:57.590 --> 00:11:00.629 the Ottoman strength into a liability. They are 00:11:00.629 --> 00:11:02.950 trapped defending a piece of metal in the desert. 00:11:03.169 --> 00:11:06.289 You've got it. He called it a war of dervishes 00:11:06.289 --> 00:11:09.679 against regular forces. He compared the Arab 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.879 forces to a gas or a vapor. They should be everywhere 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:16.100 and nowhere. Never a fixed target. Strike the 00:11:16.100 --> 00:11:18.519 rail line, blow up a train and then just vanish 00:11:18.519 --> 00:11:20.480 back into the desert before the Turks could even 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:23.080 mobilize. This is the birth of modern guerrilla 00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:25.419 warfare. It is. It's the template. Don't fight 00:11:25.419 --> 00:11:28.340 the enemy's army. Fight his supply lines. Bleed 00:11:28.340 --> 00:11:30.159 him dry. I want to get into the weeds on this 00:11:30.159 --> 00:11:32.240 because the blowing up trains part is what everyone 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:34.399 remembers. But it wasn't just random destruction, 00:11:34.620 --> 00:11:36.909 was it? There was a real science to it. Lawrence 00:11:36.909 --> 00:11:39.889 was very, very technical about his explosives. 00:11:40.269 --> 00:11:43.529 He turned demolition into an art form. He didn't 00:11:43.529 --> 00:11:45.250 just put a heap of dynamite on the track and 00:11:45.250 --> 00:11:47.470 hope for the best. So what did he do? He used 00:11:47.470 --> 00:11:50.129 a specific technique that he developed, a technique 00:11:50.129 --> 00:11:53.070 he called the tulip. The tulip? So instead of 00:11:53.070 --> 00:11:55.210 just breaking the rail, he would place a charge 00:11:55.210 --> 00:11:58.039 under a metal sleeper. That's the tie connecting 00:11:58.039 --> 00:12:01.460 the two rails. When the charge detonated, the 00:12:01.460 --> 00:12:04.000 force wouldn't just snap the rail. It would twist 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:07.460 it upwards into this complex flower -like shape. 00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:12.279 Ah, I see. A tulip. Exactly. And the genius of 00:12:12.279 --> 00:12:14.879 it was that it was incredibly difficult to repair. 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:17.159 You couldn't just patch it or bolt it back together. 00:12:17.240 --> 00:12:19.419 You had to cut the whole mangled section out 00:12:19.419 --> 00:12:22.120 and rebuild the bed from scratch. It maximized 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:24.139 the downtime for the enemy. And he was right 00:12:24.139 --> 00:12:25.980 there doing it. He wasn't ordering this from 00:12:25.980 --> 00:12:28.820 a desk in Cairo. No, no. He was the trigger man. 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:31.179 He was obsessed with getting it right. He describes 00:12:31.179 --> 00:12:33.580 the sensation of lying in the sand, the heat 00:12:33.580 --> 00:12:35.960 of the plunger in his hand, waiting for the train 00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:38.539 to hit just the right spot. But the aftermath 00:12:38.539 --> 00:12:41.299 must have been brutal. Horrific. He writes about 00:12:41.299 --> 00:12:43.919 it in detail. The Turkish soldiers dead and dying, 00:12:44.019 --> 00:12:47.200 the chaos, the looting by the Bedouin tribes 00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:49.419 who would descend on the wreckage. It wasn't 00:12:49.419 --> 00:12:52.049 clean. It wasn't heroic in that movie sense. 00:12:52.190 --> 00:12:55.970 It was chaotic and incredibly bloody. This success, 00:12:56.070 --> 00:12:58.549 though, it gives him the capital to propose his 00:12:58.549 --> 00:13:02.230 craziest idea yet. The attack on Aqaba. Aqaba 00:13:02.230 --> 00:13:04.669 was the key. It was the key. It was the last 00:13:04.669 --> 00:13:07.899 Red Sea port in Ottoman hands. If the British 00:13:07.899 --> 00:13:09.559 could take it, they could land supplies, they 00:13:09.559 --> 00:13:11.580 could link up with the Arab forces, and they 00:13:11.580 --> 00:13:14.480 could begin the push north to Jerusalem and Damascus. 00:13:14.600 --> 00:13:17.440 But it was a fortress. A massive fortress. All 00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:19.919 the big guns faced the sea because everyone, 00:13:20.059 --> 00:13:22.279 including the Turks, assumed an attack would 00:13:22.279 --> 00:13:24.519 have to come from the British Navy. And behind 00:13:24.519 --> 00:13:28.700 the city is just nothing. Mountains and the impassable 00:13:28.700 --> 00:13:30.799 desert. The sun's anvil, that's what they called 00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:33.860 it. No water, brutal heat, deadly snakes. The 00:13:33.860 --> 00:13:35.860 Turks didn't even bother to defend the land side 00:13:35.860 --> 00:13:37.740 because they thought nature defended it for them. 00:13:37.919 --> 00:13:40.600 But Lawrence saw an opportunity. He saw the one 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:44.320 thing no one else did. He convinced Aura Abutai, 00:13:44.519 --> 00:13:47.600 the leader of the powerful Hawatat tribe, I mean, 00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:50.220 a legendary warrior, to attempt the crossing. 00:13:50.460 --> 00:13:52.759 This is the march that nearly killed them. It's 00:13:52.759 --> 00:13:55.470 an epic journey. They rode hundreds of miles 00:13:55.470 --> 00:13:58.269 in a huge loop to come at Aqaba from the east 00:13:58.269 --> 00:14:01.809 from the interior. They ran out of water. Men 00:14:01.809 --> 00:14:03.750 went mad from the heat and thirst. There were 00:14:03.750 --> 00:14:06.389 constant snake bites. But they made it. They 00:14:06.389 --> 00:14:08.149 managed to gather more tribes along the way. 00:14:08.169 --> 00:14:10.409 They built a coalition. And when they finally 00:14:10.409 --> 00:14:14.110 descended on Aqaba in July of 1917, the Ottoman 00:14:14.110 --> 00:14:17.649 garrison was completely, utterly stunned. They 00:14:17.649 --> 00:14:19.529 surrendered largely because they were starving 00:14:19.529 --> 00:14:21.750 and totally cut off. Yeah. They never saw it 00:14:21.750 --> 00:14:23.789 coming. Lawrence then has to ride across the 00:14:23.789 --> 00:14:26.009 Sinai alone to tell the British, hey, I took 00:14:26.009 --> 00:14:28.190 the city. It's an incredible feat of endurance. 00:14:28.779 --> 00:14:31.500 He rode for days with almost no sleep to reach 00:14:31.500 --> 00:14:34.279 the Suez Canal. He walks into General Allenby's 00:14:34.279 --> 00:14:36.559 headquarters in Cairo, looking like a beggar 00:14:36.559 --> 00:14:38.840 covered in dust, and announces that they hold 00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:40.840 Aqaba. And then that changes everything. That 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:43.399 moment changed the war in the Middle East. Allenby 00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:45.399 realized Lawrence wasn't just a quirky eccentric. 00:14:46.139 --> 00:14:49.539 He was a strategic weapon. He gave Lawrence gold, 00:14:49.919 --> 00:14:52.679 guns, Rolls Royce, armored cars, whatever he 00:14:52.679 --> 00:14:55.360 wanted. He gave him a free hand. But as his fame 00:14:55.360 --> 00:14:58.639 and his power grow, his internal state seems 00:14:58.639 --> 00:15:01.440 to be crumbling. It is. The pressure is immense. 00:15:01.740 --> 00:15:03.539 And we have to talk about Dara. It's November 00:15:03.539 --> 00:15:06.639 1917. This is the darkest moment in the entire 00:15:06.639 --> 00:15:09.120 story. It's the central trauma of his life. What 00:15:09.120 --> 00:15:11.840 happened? Lawrence was reconnoitering a key railway 00:15:11.840 --> 00:15:14.649 junction at Dara. He was in disguise, dressed 00:15:14.649 --> 00:15:17.190 as a local. He was stopped by Ottoman soldiers. 00:15:17.450 --> 00:15:19.610 Now, they didn't know who he was, but they took 00:15:19.610 --> 00:15:21.750 him to the local governor, the Bey. And this 00:15:21.750 --> 00:15:23.970 is where the account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom 00:15:23.970 --> 00:15:27.129 gets very, very difficult to read. It is. Lawrence 00:15:27.129 --> 00:15:30.210 writes that he was sexually propositioned by 00:15:30.210 --> 00:15:32.710 the Bey. He refused. And then the Bey handed 00:15:32.710 --> 00:15:34.889 him over to the guards. And he describes a horrific 00:15:34.889 --> 00:15:37.070 assault. He describes a brutal whipping and a 00:15:37.070 --> 00:15:39.470 gang rape. He writes, and this is the key phrase, 00:15:39.710 --> 00:15:42.429 in Dara that night, the citadel of my integrity 00:15:42.429 --> 00:15:45.049 had been irrevocably lost. I know there is a 00:15:45.049 --> 00:15:47.490 lot of historical debate about this. Some biographers 00:15:47.490 --> 00:15:49.970 like Richard Aldington later on claimed he made 00:15:49.970 --> 00:15:52.769 the whole thing up. It is controversial. There 00:15:52.769 --> 00:15:54.789 are some timeline issues that skeptics point 00:15:54.789 --> 00:15:57.710 to. But most modern scholars and biographers 00:15:57.710 --> 00:16:00.730 believe something deeply traumatic did happen 00:16:00.730 --> 00:16:03.750 to him there. Whether the details are 100 % accurate 00:16:03.750 --> 00:16:06.830 or filtered through trauma and memory, we can't 00:16:06.830 --> 00:16:09.330 know. But the psychological impact was real. 00:16:09.950 --> 00:16:12.870 Undeniably. The way he writes about it, the shame, 00:16:13.090 --> 00:16:15.490 the shattering of his self -worth, the feeling 00:16:15.490 --> 00:16:17.909 of being defiled, it rings true psychologically. 00:16:18.719 --> 00:16:21.279 After Dera, Lawrence changes. He becomes more 00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:24.039 reckless. He seems to be seeking out pain, almost 00:16:24.039 --> 00:16:26.240 as if he's punishing himself. And the violence 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:28.139 he participates in gets worse. We see that at 00:16:28.139 --> 00:16:30.860 Tafas near the end of the war in 1918. Yes. A 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:32.919 column of retreating Ottoman and German soldiers 00:16:32.919 --> 00:16:35.080 massacred the villages of Tafas women and children. 00:16:35.259 --> 00:16:38.220 It was an atrocity. When the Arab forces with 00:16:38.220 --> 00:16:40.620 Lawrence arrived and saw the bodies, they went 00:16:40.620 --> 00:16:43.059 into a frenzy of rage. And Lawrence fed that 00:16:43.059 --> 00:16:46.580 rage. He did. He wrote that he told them the 00:16:46.580 --> 00:16:48.600 best of you brings me the most Turkish dead. 00:16:49.059 --> 00:16:51.879 He essentially ordered, or at least condoned, 00:16:51.919 --> 00:16:55.399 a no prisoners policy. They caught the retreating 00:16:55.399 --> 00:16:57.440 column and they slaughtered them. It was a war 00:16:57.440 --> 00:16:59.840 crime by modern standards. Without question. 00:16:59.879 --> 00:17:02.299 It completely destroys the myth of the chivalrous 00:17:02.299 --> 00:17:05.460 hero. This was a man consumed by revenge and 00:17:05.460 --> 00:17:08.319 exhaustion. And guilt. And immense guilt. Because 00:17:08.319 --> 00:17:10.339 we have to remember the whole time, while he 00:17:10.339 --> 00:17:12.940 is leading these men, fighting alongside them, 00:17:12.960 --> 00:17:15.440 bleeding with them, he knows about the Sykes 00:17:15.440 --> 00:17:17.640 -Picot Agreement. Explain that for us. It was 00:17:17.640 --> 00:17:20.420 a secret deal made back in 1916 between Britain 00:17:20.420 --> 00:17:23.960 and France. Basically, a British diplomat, Mark 00:17:23.960 --> 00:17:26.539 Sykes, and a French diplomat, Francois -Georges 00:17:26.539 --> 00:17:29.019 Picot, they drew a line on a map of the Middle 00:17:29.019 --> 00:17:32.259 East. Just drew a line. With a pencil. They agreed 00:17:32.259 --> 00:17:34.480 that after the war, France would get control 00:17:34.480 --> 00:17:37.480 of Syria and Lebanon and Britain would get control 00:17:37.480 --> 00:17:40.380 of Iraq and Jordan and Palestine. But Lawrence 00:17:40.380 --> 00:17:43.119 is telling Faisal, fight for us and you get your 00:17:43.119 --> 00:17:45.859 independence. You get a unified Arab state. Exactly. 00:17:45.960 --> 00:17:49.079 He knew he was selling a lie. He wrote in a letter, 00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:52.319 I am a living lie. He was caught between his 00:17:52.319 --> 00:17:55.220 loyalty to his men and his duty to his country's 00:17:55.220 --> 00:17:58.450 dishonest politics. So what was his plan? He 00:17:58.450 --> 00:18:00.730 hoped that if the Arabs could race to Damascus 00:18:00.730 --> 00:18:02.609 and capture it before the British army arrived, 00:18:02.950 --> 00:18:05.250 they could set up a government, plant their flag, 00:18:05.390 --> 00:18:08.029 and present it to the world as a fait accompli. 00:18:08.289 --> 00:18:10.589 He was trying to outrun the politicians. And 00:18:10.589 --> 00:18:13.470 they do reach Damascus first in October 1918. 00:18:13.690 --> 00:18:16.730 They do, just it's chaotic. Lawrence tries to 00:18:16.730 --> 00:18:19.190 set up a provisional Arab administration, but 00:18:19.190 --> 00:18:21.609 the geopolitics were just too strong. The French 00:18:21.609 --> 00:18:24.069 demanded their slice of the cake as agreed. The 00:18:24.069 --> 00:18:26.549 British government caved. Faisal was eventually 00:18:26.549 --> 00:18:28.869 kicked out of Damascus by the French. The dream 00:18:28.869 --> 00:18:31.470 was dead. The dream of a fully independent, unified 00:18:31.470 --> 00:18:34.730 Arab state was dead. Lawrence left Damascus knowing 00:18:34.730 --> 00:18:37.029 that the promise he had made was broken. He goes 00:18:37.029 --> 00:18:40.029 back to London and he is a broken man. But the 00:18:40.029 --> 00:18:42.329 establishment, they want to honor him. There 00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:44.009 is this incredible scene at Buckingham Palace 00:18:44.009 --> 00:18:48.150 with King George V. It's October 1918. He is 00:18:48.150 --> 00:18:50.160 summoned to the palace. He's going to be made 00:18:50.160 --> 00:18:52.240 a knight commander of the British Empire. The 00:18:52.240 --> 00:18:54.500 king is standing there holding the box with the 00:18:54.500 --> 00:18:57.839 insignia. Lawrence walks up. And just says no. 00:18:57.980 --> 00:19:01.059 He quietly tells the king that he cannot accept 00:19:01.059 --> 00:19:03.660 any honors from a government that had betrayed 00:19:03.660 --> 00:19:07.259 its word to the Arabs. Can you imagine the silence 00:19:07.259 --> 00:19:10.400 in that room? It was unheard of. A complete scandal. 00:19:10.759 --> 00:19:12.980 He told the king he might find himself fighting 00:19:12.980 --> 00:19:15.160 against the British forces in the future because 00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:17.549 of what they had done. The king was apparently 00:19:17.549 --> 00:19:19.829 left just holding the box, totally bewildered. 00:19:20.029 --> 00:19:22.470 Lawrence walked out as a plain civilian. But 00:19:22.470 --> 00:19:24.849 he couldn't just be a civilian because right 00:19:24.849 --> 00:19:27.109 at this moment, the legend explodes. And it's 00:19:27.109 --> 00:19:28.589 not really because of what he did in the war. 00:19:28.710 --> 00:19:30.549 It's because of an American journalist named 00:19:30.549 --> 00:19:32.630 Lowell Thomas. Lowell Thomas is the architect 00:19:32.630 --> 00:19:35.109 of Lawrence of Arabia. He's the man who created 00:19:35.109 --> 00:19:37.849 the myth. He had gone to the Middle East looking 00:19:37.849 --> 00:19:39.950 for a morale boosting story for the American 00:19:39.950 --> 00:19:43.329 public. He found Lawrence. And saw a star. He 00:19:43.329 --> 00:19:48.259 saw a star. He saw this young, blonde Brit dressed 00:19:48.259 --> 00:19:51.140 as a Bedouin. He took these incredibly romantic 00:19:51.140 --> 00:19:54.519 photos. And Thomas came back to London and launched 00:19:54.519 --> 00:19:56.940 a multimedia show. This wasn't just a lecture, 00:19:57.000 --> 00:19:59.920 right? No, it was a sensation. It was held at 00:19:59.920 --> 00:20:02.420 the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden. It had 00:20:02.420 --> 00:20:05.480 film reels, hand -colored glass slides, a live 00:20:05.480 --> 00:20:08.599 orchestra, and Thomas narrating these incredible 00:20:08.599 --> 00:20:11.400 tales of the mystery man of the desert. It was 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:14.160 like a blockbuster movie before movies were really 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:16.859 a thing. Absolutely. Millions of people saw it. 00:20:16.859 --> 00:20:20.059 It was a global phenomenon. And overnight, Lawrence 00:20:20.059 --> 00:20:22.900 became arguably the most famous man in the British 00:20:22.900 --> 00:20:25.720 Empire. He was chased by women, by reporters. 00:20:25.920 --> 00:20:28.180 He became a brand. And how did he handle that? 00:20:28.319 --> 00:20:30.799 He hated it, but he also kind of loved it. It's 00:20:30.799 --> 00:20:32.859 complicated. He would apparently sneak into the 00:20:32.859 --> 00:20:35.019 back of the theater to watch the show about himself. 00:20:35.180 --> 00:20:37.640 He had a very, very complex relationship with 00:20:37.640 --> 00:20:40.000 his own fame. So he tries to reclaim his narrative 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:42.539 by writing his own book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. 00:20:42.819 --> 00:20:45.200 But even that process was a disaster. He lost 00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:47.500 the book. It's every writer's worst nightmare. 00:20:48.059 --> 00:20:51.380 In 1919, he was changing trains at Reading Station. 00:20:51.900 --> 00:20:54.240 He went to buy a newspaper or a sandwich and 00:20:54.240 --> 00:20:56.880 left his briefcase on the platform. When he came 00:20:56.880 --> 00:20:59.240 back, it was gone. And that was it. The only 00:20:59.240 --> 00:21:01.920 copy. It contained the only draft of the book. 00:21:02.019 --> 00:21:04.799 Thousands and thousands of words. Gone. So he 00:21:04.799 --> 00:21:07.380 just wrote it again? He locked himself in a room 00:21:07.380 --> 00:21:10.400 in London and rewrote the entire thing from memory. 00:21:10.839 --> 00:21:13.859 It nearly drove him insane. The result is this 00:21:13.859 --> 00:21:17.240 dense, philosophical, epic book. It's brilliant, 00:21:17.420 --> 00:21:19.619 but it's also a very difficult read. And he wouldn't 00:21:19.619 --> 00:21:22.180 make any money from it. Refused. He priced the 00:21:22.180 --> 00:21:24.220 private subscription edition incredibly high 00:21:24.220 --> 00:21:26.819 just to cover the printing costs. He insisted 00:21:26.819 --> 00:21:29.759 on lavish illustrations and fine binding. And 00:21:29.759 --> 00:21:32.259 he gave any surplus to the RAF Benevolent Fund. 00:21:32.440 --> 00:21:34.160 He called the money he got from the war blood 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:36.500 money. So he wants to escape. He wants to disappear. 00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:38.720 And his solution is to join the military again, 00:21:38.799 --> 00:21:41.579 but at the very bottom. He craved anonymity. 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:45.140 He wanted to be a number, not a name. In 1922, 00:21:45.420 --> 00:21:47.500 he used some high -level connections to secretly 00:21:47.500 --> 00:21:49.880 enlist in the Royal Air Force under the name 00:21:49.880 --> 00:21:52.819 John Hume Ross. So the hero of the desert is 00:21:52.819 --> 00:21:55.759 now scrubbing floors. Scrubbing floors, peeling 00:21:55.759 --> 00:21:58.180 potatoes, living in a barrack with a bunch of 00:21:58.180 --> 00:22:00.680 18 -year -old kids. He just wanted to be ordinary. 00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:03.660 But the press found him. Of course they did. 00:22:04.039 --> 00:22:07.640 The Daily Express broke this story. Uncrowned 00:22:07.640 --> 00:22:11.319 king of Arabia working as a common private. The 00:22:11.319 --> 00:22:14.500 RAF was embarrassed and kicked him out because 00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:16.680 it was a circus. And then he ends up in the tank 00:22:16.680 --> 00:22:19.099 corps. A miserable time in the tank corps, which 00:22:19.099 --> 00:22:21.359 he absolutely hated. He was claustrophobic and 00:22:21.359 --> 00:22:23.880 brutal. He eventually pulled strings again and 00:22:23.880 --> 00:22:26.299 managed to get back into the RAF, this time as 00:22:26.299 --> 00:22:29.279 T .E. Shaw. Shaw being a name he took from his 00:22:29.279 --> 00:22:31.799 friend, the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Yes. 00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:34.400 And he spent the next decade effectively as a 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:37.019 monk in a mechanic's uniform. He wrote another 00:22:37.019 --> 00:22:39.529 book about this period, The Mint. Which is completely 00:22:39.529 --> 00:22:42.069 different from Seven Pillars. Night and day. 00:22:42.289 --> 00:22:45.170 It's gritty. It's full of slang. The prose is 00:22:45.170 --> 00:22:48.029 sparse and direct. It's all about the daily grind, 00:22:48.109 --> 00:22:50.529 the discipline, and finding a strange kind of 00:22:50.529 --> 00:22:52.650 brotherhood in the machine. And speaking of machines, 00:22:52.809 --> 00:22:55.410 he wasn't just hiding. He was actually inventing 00:22:55.410 --> 00:22:58.069 things. He couldn't help himself. He had this 00:22:58.069 --> 00:23:00.849 restless intellect. He was stationed at Plymouth 00:23:00.849 --> 00:23:03.650 and witnessed a seaplane crash. The plane went 00:23:03.650 --> 00:23:05.829 down, and the rescue boats they had were too 00:23:05.829 --> 00:23:07.950 slow to get there before the crew drowned. And 00:23:07.950 --> 00:23:10.470 Lawrence was horrified. He was. He thought it 00:23:10.470 --> 00:23:13.029 was an unacceptable failure of technology. So 00:23:13.029 --> 00:23:14.950 he started working with boat designers to build 00:23:14.950 --> 00:23:17.769 high -speed rescue launches. He spent years testing 00:23:17.769 --> 00:23:20.529 engines and hull designs. The resulting boats, 00:23:20.710 --> 00:23:24.269 the ST -200 class, were revolutionary, and they 00:23:24.269 --> 00:23:26.529 saved countless pilots' lives during World War 00:23:26.529 --> 00:23:28.430 II. So even when he's trying to be a nobody, 00:23:28.690 --> 00:23:31.049 he's still influencing the military. He couldn't 00:23:31.049 --> 00:23:33.269 just sit still. Yeah. Which brings us to his 00:23:33.269 --> 00:23:36.440 other obsession, speed. The motorcycle. He loved 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:39.420 them. He owned a series of bro superiors, which 00:23:39.420 --> 00:23:42.059 were basically the supercars of their day, the 00:23:42.059 --> 00:23:44.519 fastest bikes in the world, any of them George 00:23:44.519 --> 00:23:47.220 I through George VII. And he didn't ride them 00:23:47.220 --> 00:23:49.359 carefully. He would tear through the English 00:23:49.359 --> 00:23:52.319 countryside at 100 miles per hour. He wrote that 00:23:52.319 --> 00:23:54.599 it was the only time his mind went quiet, the 00:23:54.599 --> 00:23:57.019 only time he could stop thinking. And that leads 00:23:57.019 --> 00:24:01.000 us to May 13, 1935. He has just retired from 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:03.650 the RAF. He's living in his little cottage, Clouds 00:24:03.650 --> 00:24:06.369 Hill, in Dorset. He rides his brew, George VII, 00:24:06.650 --> 00:24:10.130 into town to send a telegram. On the way back, 00:24:10.190 --> 00:24:12.009 he's coming over a crest in the road. It's a 00:24:12.009 --> 00:24:15.029 blind spot. Suddenly, there are two young boys 00:24:15.029 --> 00:24:17.829 on bicycles, right in his path. He has a split 00:24:17.829 --> 00:24:20.130 -second choice. He swerves to avoid them. He 00:24:20.130 --> 00:24:21.930 clips the back of one of the bicycles, and he's 00:24:21.930 --> 00:24:23.650 thrown over the handlebars. He wasn't wearing 00:24:23.650 --> 00:24:27.289 a helmet. Nobody did back then. He suffered catastrophic 00:24:27.289 --> 00:24:30.029 brain injuries. He lingered in a coma for six 00:24:30.029 --> 00:24:33.170 days. and died on May 19th at the age of 46. 00:24:33.549 --> 00:24:36.150 It feels so anticlimactic. The man who crossed 00:24:36.150 --> 00:24:38.450 the Sinai, who survived torture, who blew up 00:24:38.450 --> 00:24:41.950 trains, killed on a quiet country lane. It is 00:24:41.950 --> 00:24:44.250 tragic. But there's a strange silver lining to 00:24:44.250 --> 00:24:46.750 it. One of the doctors who treated him was a 00:24:46.750 --> 00:24:48.990 brilliant young neurosurgeon named Hugh Cairns. 00:24:49.130 --> 00:24:51.710 Okay. Cairns was so shaken by seeing this incredible 00:24:51.710 --> 00:24:54.250 mind destroyed by a preventable head injury that 00:24:54.250 --> 00:24:57.349 he began a massive, years -long study on motorcycle 00:24:57.349 --> 00:24:59.589 head injuries among soldiers. And that research. 00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:02.420 His research directly led to the British military 00:25:02.420 --> 00:25:05.559 and later civilians adopting crash helmets as 00:25:05.559 --> 00:25:08.440 standard practice. So in a way, Lawrence's death 00:25:08.440 --> 00:25:11.960 has saved countless other lives. So again, even 00:25:11.960 --> 00:25:14.980 in death, he changes the world. But his reputation 00:25:14.980 --> 00:25:18.359 didn't rest in peace. In the 1950s, the backlash 00:25:18.359 --> 00:25:21.640 started. The Richard Aldington biography in 1955, 00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:26.099 it was a complete hatchet job. Aldington basically 00:25:26.099 --> 00:25:29.140 called Lawrence a liar, a fraud, and a pervert. 00:25:29.549 --> 00:25:32.170 He attacked everything. The illegitimacy, the 00:25:32.170 --> 00:25:34.890 military claims, the sexuality. It was brutal. 00:25:35.130 --> 00:25:37.950 Was there any truth to it? Well, the illegitimacy 00:25:37.950 --> 00:25:39.950 was true, obviously, and that was a huge part 00:25:39.950 --> 00:25:42.549 of the scandal Aldington created. But the military 00:25:42.549 --> 00:25:44.670 stuff. Aldington claimed Lawrence lied about 00:25:44.670 --> 00:25:47.170 how many bridges he blew up. or that he exaggerated 00:25:47.170 --> 00:25:49.609 his role. And did he? Later research and the 00:25:49.609 --> 00:25:51.789 declassification of government files proved that 00:25:51.789 --> 00:25:54.329 while Lawrence might have polished a detail here 00:25:54.329 --> 00:25:56.390 or there for a good story, and he loved a good 00:25:56.390 --> 00:25:58.410 story, the core achievements were absolutely 00:25:58.410 --> 00:26:01.289 real. He really was the strategic driver of the 00:26:01.289 --> 00:26:03.609 Arab revolt. And what about the sexuality aspect? 00:26:03.730 --> 00:26:06.230 That has been obsessed over for a century. It 00:26:06.230 --> 00:26:09.410 has. Seven Pillars opens with a famous poem dedicated 00:26:09.410 --> 00:26:13.799 to S .A. It starts, I loved you, so I drew these 00:26:13.799 --> 00:26:16.259 tides of men into my hands and wrote my will 00:26:16.259 --> 00:26:19.859 across the sky in stars. And S .A. is Dahum. 00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:23.319 Most historians agree S .A. was Salim Ahmed Dahum, 00:26:23.559 --> 00:26:26.400 the boy from Carchemish, who died of typhus just 00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:29.039 before the end of the war. Lawrence was absolutely 00:26:29.039 --> 00:26:31.119 heartbroken. But was it a sexual relationship? 00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:34.359 We simply don't know for sure. Lawrence's friends 00:26:34.359 --> 00:26:36.839 and letters suggest he was largely asexual and 00:26:36.839 --> 00:26:39.329 had a deep aversion to being touched. However, 00:26:39.509 --> 00:26:41.849 we do know about the masochism. This is a difficult 00:26:41.849 --> 00:26:44.730 part of his life. It is. After the war, there's 00:26:44.730 --> 00:26:46.789 clear evidence that Lawrence arranged for a military 00:26:46.789 --> 00:26:48.910 colleague to beat him periodically with a birch. 00:26:48.970 --> 00:26:51.609 That paints a picture of someone in deep, unresolved 00:26:51.609 --> 00:26:54.470 pain. It does. It suggests he was trying to exorcise 00:26:54.470 --> 00:26:56.769 the demons of Dara or perhaps punishing himself 00:26:56.769 --> 00:26:58.650 for the fraud of his leadership during the war. 00:26:58.829 --> 00:27:01.410 It makes him a deeply sympathetic, tragic figure 00:27:01.410 --> 00:27:04.210 rather than just a cardboard hero. So when we 00:27:04.210 --> 00:27:06.329 look at the map of the Middle East today, Syria, 00:27:06.990 --> 00:27:11.130 Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine. We're looking 00:27:11.130 --> 00:27:13.869 at the wreckage of the world. Lawrence helped 00:27:13.869 --> 00:27:16.769 build and then saw collapse. We are. He helped 00:27:16.769 --> 00:27:20.269 unleash forces, Arab nationalism, Zionism, colonial 00:27:20.269 --> 00:27:22.849 partition that are still fighting each other 00:27:22.849 --> 00:27:25.809 to this day. He was the bridge between the 19th 00:27:25.809 --> 00:27:28.890 century empire and the chaotic modern Middle 00:27:28.890 --> 00:27:32.200 East. And as a final thought to chew on. Lawrence 00:27:32.200 --> 00:27:34.180 wrote that he acted the part of the Arab leader 00:27:34.180 --> 00:27:36.779 for so long that the citadel of my integrity 00:27:36.779 --> 00:27:39.400 had been irrevocably lost. He hollowed himself 00:27:39.400 --> 00:27:42.339 out to become the legend. The role consumed him. 00:27:42.500 --> 00:27:44.599 So the question for you to think about is, was 00:27:44.599 --> 00:27:46.740 Lawrence of Arabia the greatest role he ever 00:27:46.740 --> 00:27:49.019 played? And in the end, did the character eventually 00:27:49.019 --> 00:27:51.299 kill the man? I think he spent the rest of his 00:27:51.299 --> 00:27:53.440 life trying to find the man again, but he never 00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:55.579 quite could. He was trapped inside the myth. 00:27:55.779 --> 00:27:58.119 A heavy thought to end on. That's our deep dive 00:27:58.119 --> 00:27:59.980 on T .E. Lawrence. Thanks for listening. Thank 00:27:59.980 --> 00:28:00.119 you.