T. E. Lawrence Timeline

T. E. Lawrence 29

1888 T. E. Lawrence born in Tremadog Tremadog, Wales The second of five sons of Thomas Chapman, an Anglo-Irish baronet who had left his wife and taken the family governess. The couple never married and lived under her surname. Lawrence learned the truth as a young man.
1896 The family settles in Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom After years of moving to stay ahead of gossip, the Lawrences took a house on Polstead Road. He built himself a bungalow in the garden to work in.
1907 – 1910 Jesus College, Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom He read history, cycled through France measuring castles, and was known for eccentric hours and not eating much.
1909 A thousand miles on foot through Syria Ottoman Syria At twenty, alone and against advice, he walked over 1,000 miles in three months to survey 36 crusader castles. He was robbed, beaten and caught malaria, and came back with the material for his thesis.
1910 A first-class thesis on crusader castles Oxford, United Kingdom He argued that crusader military architecture had been carried east from Europe rather than borrowed from the Arabs — reversing the accepted view.
1911 – 1914 The dig at Carchemish Carchemish, Ottoman Syria Four seasons excavating a Hittite city on the Euphrates for the British Museum. He learned Arabic, ran the local workforce, and formed the view of Arab life that shaped everything he did later.
1914 The Wilderness of Zin survey Negev, Ottoman Palestine An archaeological survey of the Negev that doubled as a military mapping exercise for the British Army, with the excavation providing cover.
1914 Military intelligence in Cairo Cairo, Egypt Commissioned without training and posted to the Arab Bureau, making maps and interrogating prisoners. He was disliked by regular officers for his scruffiness and his certainty.
1916 The Arab Revolt begins Hejaz, Ottoman Empire Sharif Hussein of Mecca rose against Ottoman rule with British money and arms. Lawrence was sent to assess which of his sons was worth backing.
1916 He meets Faisal Hamra, Hejaz Lawrence decided within minutes that Faisal was the leader he was looking for — a man who could carry a rebellion. The two would work together for the next six years.
1917 – 1918 The war on the Hejaz Railway Arabia Rather than take Medina, Lawrence kept the Ottoman garrison there and bled the line that supplied it — blowing up track, bridges and locomotives to tie down thousands of troops. It became a model for irregular warfare.
1917 The capture of Aqaba Aqaba, Ottoman Empire Rather than attack the fortified port from the sea, Lawrence and Auda abu Tayi took a force 600 miles inland through the Nefud desert and came at it from behind, where the guns could not turn. It made his reputation and opened a supply line to the north.
1917 Deraa Deraa, Ottoman Syria Captured while scouting in disguise, Lawrence was beaten and, by his own account in Seven Pillars, sexually assaulted before escaping. Historians disagree about what happened; he described it as the night his will broke.
1918 Damascus falls Damascus, Ottoman Syria Arab forces entered the city and Faisal formed a government. Lawrence left within days, knowing that the Sykes-Picot agreement had already promised Syria to France.
1919 Lawrence at the Paris Peace Conference Paris, France Lawrence attended as Faisal's adviser and interpreter, arguing for Arab independence against a settlement that had been decided in secret three years earlier. He failed.
1919 Lowell Thomas makes him famous London, United Kingdom An American journalist's illustrated travelogue, With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia, ran in London for months and was seen by around four million people. Lawrence attended repeatedly, in disguise, and hated what it did to his life.
1919 The lost manuscript Reading, United Kingdom He left the near-complete draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in a bag at Reading station while changing trains. It was never recovered, and he rewrote the book largely from memory.
1921 The Cairo Conference Cairo, Egypt As Churchill's adviser at the Colonial Office, Lawrence helped install Faisal as king of Iraq and his brother Abdullah in Transjordan — the settlement he regarded as his partial redemption for 1919.
1922 He enlists as Aircraftman Ross Uxbridge, United Kingdom At the height of his fame, Lawrence joined the RAF as a private under the name John Hume Ross, having been turned down at first for failing the medical. He wanted anonymity and the routine of the ranks.
1923 – 1935 Clouds Hill Dorset, United Kingdom He rented, then bought, a derelict cottage near the Tank Corps camp. It had no kitchen and no bed; he lived there with books, gramophone records and his motorcycles.
1923 Exposed and discharged United Kingdom The press found him out and the RAF dismissed him. He enlisted in the Tank Corps instead, now as T. E. Shaw, and took the name legally in 1927.
1925 Back in the RAF United Kingdom After lobbying friends in high places and threatening suicide, he was readmitted and served another ten years in the ranks.
1926 Seven Pillars of Wisdom London, United Kingdom Privately printed in around 200 copies, each costing more to produce than its thirty-guinea price, so the book left him in debt. It is part campaign history, part confession, and unlike anything else written about the war.
1927 Revolt in the Desert London, United Kingdom An abridgement of Seven Pillars sold enormously and cleared his debts. He withdrew it from sale as soon as they were paid.
1927 – 1929 Posted to India Karachi and Miranshah Two years at remote airfields, partly to get him out of the newspapers. Rumours that he was spying in Afghanistan brought him home again.
1929 – 1935 The fast rescue boats Plymouth and Bridlington Lawrence spent his last RAF years developing high-speed marine craft for rescuing ditched aircrew, testing hulls himself. The 200 Class seaplane tender he helped refine saved many lives in the next war — work he valued more than anything he did in Arabia.
1935 He leaves the RAF Bridlington, United Kingdom Discharged at 46 with no plans, he cycled to Clouds Hill and wrote to a friend that he felt like a leaf fallen from a tree.
1935 The crash Dorset, United Kingdom Riding his Brough Superior back from the post office, Lawrence crested a dip in the road, met two boys on bicycles, swerved to avoid them and was thrown over the handlebars. He was not wearing a helmet, and almost nobody did.
1935 Lawrence dies Bovington, United Kingdom He never regained consciousness and died six days after the crash, aged 46. Churchill wept at the funeral; the neurosurgeon who had attended him spent the next six years thinking about why he died.