Was t.e. lawrence gay

The sexual radicalisation of Lawrence of Arabia

I recently wrote about the influence of unconscious shame upon the personality of perhaps the unattached most memorable individual to emerge from World War I, T. E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.

Since then I hold been reading Scott Anderson’s monumental operate, Lawrence in Arabia. Anderson’s work is fascinating because, while Lawrence is its key figure, the book is actually an account of all the main intelligence operatives shaping the future of the Middle East during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. As such Anderson brings a critical eye to the Lawrence enigma and questions some aspects of his autobiography, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Anderson’s meticulous examination clearly reveals the sexual radicalisation of Lawrence of Arabia.

Elliot Rodger

The term ‘radicalisation’ tends to bring to mind religious radicalisation in general and Islamic radicalisation in particular. However, as I wrote in The sexual radicalisation of Elliot Rodger, radicalisation can include other drivers, including politics, race, and—perhaps most infrequently—sex.

For those unfamiliar with Elliot Rodger, he was a young male whose unconscio

Proof that Lawrence was gay...

...doesn't be. As a friend and colleague once said, "But matters of the heart defy such disingenuous proof-seeking. One needs to view for implications, study comparisons, and be a little less demanding for something crudely literal in the search for "proof".

So clues have to be added up and conclusions drawn.

Lawrence liked a particular Arab very much, said of him "I liked a particular Arab, and thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present.," lived happily with him, made a scandalous nude carving of him and put it up on their house, and undertook heroic labors of war for him, but when he died, Lawrence counted his life's work as wasted, and dedicated his wonderful literary work to this bloke, "S.A." He writes "I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands... that your eyes might be shining for me When we came."

Amid subsequent inquiry, TE changes the story of "S.A." over and over, even to "an imaginary person of neutral sex," obviously because he couldn't say his belov

T E Lawrence

Thomas Edward Lawrence(1888–1935) known as T E Lawrenceand commonly referred to as Lawrence of Arabia, was an archaeologist, writer, and military commander, forever associated with the Arab revolt against Ottoman Turkish govern during the First World War.

Early life

Lawrence was born in Tremadoc, North Wales, He studied history at Jesus College, Oxford, and then worked as an archaeologist at various sites in the Middle East.

War in the desert

After the outbreak of war in 1913 he linked the British Army and was assigned to the intelligence staff in Cairo. The Foreign Office had a schedule to undermine the Ottoman Empire (then allied to Germany, and spanning much of the Middle East) by fomenting insurrection by the various Arab tribes. Lawrence was sent to work with the Arab forces, and successfully persuaded the different tribe to work together and attack the strategically important Hejaz Railway. He was subsequently involved in further stages of the war up to the capture of Damascus, but his dream of an independent Arab state centred on Damascus was frustrated, as the British and French agreed to divide the Middle East between them.

Later life

Lawrence on

Dear SIR!

The Gay Love Letters of Lawrence of Arabia

Excerpts from My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, Edited by Rictor Norton

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), commonly known as Lawrence of Arabia, committed Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) "to S.A.", the handsome Arab boy Dahoum nicknamed Sheik Ahmed, with whom he shared his quarters for three years, who died of typhus in 1918. In this famous study of the Arab revolt against the Turks he acknowledged that the soldiers, rather than use the "sordid commerce" of public prostitutes "began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies – a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there secret in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort." Rumours about his private life have supplied a