Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia

The title HERO references Michael Korda's contention that T. E. Lawrence (T. E. Shaw, Lawrence of Arabia) wanted to become a hero and had the opportunity to become one and succeeded beyond his expectations. Thus he became one of the 20th Centuries first "celebrities" mostly due to the promotion of Lowell Thomas's highly successful lectures, films and book. Korda maintains that Lawrence was the Princes Diana of his time. (This comparison being a good way to provide today's reader with an idea of the impact Lawrence had on the media culture of his own time.) Despite the book being a bit uneven I found HERO a wonderful read. The first part through page 114 is a rather dry telling of Lawrence's major accomplishment in World War One. It covers Lawrence's meeting with Prince Feisal the background of the Arab revolt against the Turks and the Arab taking the port city of Aqaba. (The actual events are significantly different than shown in the great David Lean film.) This early flashback section contains important information and sets the tone for what follows but I doubt many will find it to be page turning reading. But keep going and don't give up.Because then the book takes off and is quite an enjoyable ride as Korda goes back in time to Lawrence's childhood, family, education (at Oxford), and his interest in archeology, the middle east, and crusader castles. Korda frames all this so we can see how Lawrence swept himself along with heroic self images (and many self doubts). As if Lawrence knew he was preparing himself for something big for he became one of a few who understood the Middle East. (In fact after the war Lawrence had Middle East solutions that if implemented may have minimized many of the events we see today.) Korda narrative provides an interesting analysis as he often presents the conflicting views about controversial observations of Lawrence by prior biographers and Lawrence's contemporaries. Lawrence was not a loner as many think, but a people person (and to a certain degree a people user) who had many friends and developed vital relationships. This he did through an uncanny ability to change his own personality and stories to suite that of his listener thus providing different views of his personality thus providing history with the fuel that formed the enigma that is the Lawrence legend.I especially liked the fact the Korda spent a lot of time covering the creative side of Lawrence's character. How he wrote and rewrote SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM and went about publishing it. This and many post war events are most interestingly told by Korda. For the most part Korda explains away the controversial questions about Lawrence as being nothing more than media hype. Taking things out of context and making more of normal human reactions than they deserve. Yet we see the influences on what may have created the real, human and complex person Lawrence was. His short stature although he did not appear to have the stereotypical short man complex. At 5 foot 5 inches Lawrence was very thin mostly around 130 pounds, but at one point in the war he was down to 88 pounds. He was illegitimate (a big negative in the class structure of the country in the early 1900s). His mother was extremely religious and his father walked away from title, property, and a family (a wife and four daughters) to run away with Lawrence's mother. Korda provides the reader more with emphasis and credence on Lawrence's relationship and feelings about his father than other biographers do. I could go on and on about many interesting things Korda does in bringing Lawrence to life on the page but I suggest you discover the book on your own. As an FYI, I have had an almost life long interest (hobby) in Lawrence and have collected may books and articles about him. This started when father took my brother and me to see the film a week after he had seen in 1962 as he had been intrigued by Lawrence as a boy. If you're interesting in reading or learning more you might consider exploring the following.In several places Korda references Jeremy Wilson's book, LAWERENCE OF ARABIA: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPY OF T. E. LAWRENCE (1990). This is an exceptionally fine and very detailed and well documented work which may contain more military details than many readers want to know. (Unfortunately I don't believe it is currently in print.) Mr. Wilson and his wife Nichole now own Castle Hill Press where they have edited and published very limited, fine copies of Lawrence's works and letters. I own several of these volumes and they are wonderfully produced. Their most recent publication is Lawrence's THE MINT. (Castle Hill Press can be found on the internet.)I also greatly admired John E. Mack's A PRINCE OF OUR DISORDER, THE LIFE OF T. E. LAWRENCE (1976) which won the Pulitzer Prize. It is a psychological study with emphasis on how ones world view impacts relationships. (Mack went on later to do very controversial studies with people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens.)I recommend a reading of many of Lawrence's letter. The volume I most enjoyed is THE LETTERS OF T. E. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1938, my Spring Books volume is 1964), edited by David Garnett with a forward by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart.

I'm immensely enjoying this book, which brings to life so many elements in the life of T. E. Lawrence and places them in terrific context.What's really detracting from my enjoyment of the book, however, are the dozens and dozens of typos I've encountered (and I'm only 20% of the way through the book). Words run together at least once or twice every other page, there are numerous words that are lower case that should be upper case (just look at the notes on chapter 3 alone and you'll see at least a half dozen cases)... It's sloppy and shows that the publisher shows no regard for the e-reader--except when it comes to collecting a fat price for the ebook.I'm sure some will say to focus on the content rather than the format of the ebook, but the many many typos and words squashed together are seriously detracting from my enjoyment of this book and prove incredibly frustrating. I can't imagine that the same is true of the hard copy of the book. Either way, an editor somewhere should be fired. It's just a shame that such a fine book that the author clearly labored over is presented in such a sloppy manner.

This is one of the best biographies which was published this year. It is not an easy task to write a biography for many reasons. The writer must get to know as many angles,facts and events about his subject as possible,and he or she must also have a very good command and knowledge of the various sources which will be used to convey to the reader the best and most accurate pictureof his chosen topic.Mr. Michael Korda has managed to do all these in a big volume which does not have even one dull moment. What starts as a long chapter about the famous capture of Aqaba by Lawrence and his Arab fellows turns out to be just the beginning and the introduction to the whole book.T.E.Lawrence was one of many illegitimate children of a British aristocrat who ran way with his daughters' governess. After having been sent to Oxford where he read archaeology, T.E.Lawrence wrote a famous thesis on medieval military architecture. It was this subject which introduced him to the Arab world. He served as a young intelligence officer in Cairo in 1916 and after that spent his time in Charchemish,the Hitttite city where he got acquainted with the Arab life and manners. He did study Arabic and it was here where he met a young boy,called Darhoum,who was perhaps his only true love in life. Lawrence was sexually repressed and this was the result of his mother's tough upbringing.Later on,he was brutally sodomized by a Turk and it was this episode which changed his life.But this book is not about the erotic and homosexual experiences of Lawrence,who was also called Ned.It is about his major achievements and accomplishments both in the military field and the diplomatic ones. His destiny was to give the Arabs a land of their own and to cause "the sick man of Europe," namely the Turks,to disappear from those parts of the world. His mission was accomplished and Mr.Korda gives us an extremely balanced view about all the possible aspects of Lawrence's life. It was Lawrence who made it possible for states like Syria,Jordan and Iraq to emerge as independent ones, although he was attacked by both Arabs and Jews for being biased against them. He also made sure that King Feisal be convinced that a Jewish state would be only a good thing for the Arab world,but has not succeeded in this.Among his many friends in England from whom he sought advice about his literary projects were also Bernard Shaw and the rest of the Fabian Society.Mr.Korda emphasizes Lawrence's military successes,his connections with General Allenby his and guerrilla tactics as well as his difficult task at the 1919 Paris Conference to do everything to convince the Great Powers about his messianic mission to bring deliverance to the Arabs.Lawrence was a very complicated man and full of contradictions,who achieved a celebrity status being a visionary ahead of his times,a brilliant diplomat,a serious scholar and a military genius. All these things turned Lawrence into a hero.The legend of Lawrence has kept growing after his death and,as the author puts it,the Library of Congress "lists more than 100 books about him".If you would like to enjoy a book written in the old-fashioned way and would also like to be entertained by a great figure and a great biographer,I advise you to read this book,which is a splendid and vivid portrait of one of the most enigmatic persons who has ever lived.

Excellent biography, disappointingly poor condition.

Interessant und gut geschrieben bzw. beschrieben. Schade, dass es das nicht auf Deutsch gibt, denn es würde sich prima zum Verschenken eignen.

This book is compulsive reading. It is the story of a fascinating man - a dreamer who lived his dream. The movie gives no idea of the real complex story. Seven Pillars of Wisdom at last makes sense.

If you have not been able to read T.E. Lawrence's own book about his experiences in Arabia, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, then this biography will probably rekindle your interest. Michael Korda has written a stunning book about this extraordinary man, and it is quite an achievement that his writing almost approaches the brilliance of Lawrence's book, which he quotes at length.We have all seen the David Lean film, Lawrence of Arabia. But in the beginning it was the American broadcaster Lowell Thomas who "created" the celebrity, and it was Lawrence IN Arabia, and he took second billing to General Allenby in Palestine, as the hugely successful travelogue was called.Lawrence's life was complex and complicated, right from his birth as the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman and the household governess Sara Junner. His father left his first family in Ireland to raise a second family in Wales under the name Lawrence. At Oxford T.E. studied medieval castles and pottery and in his research travels learned to speak French, Greek, and Arabic. It was out of his experiences in the old Ottoman Empire that he became valuable to the British Army in World War I, and proved his genius as a linguist, map maker, military strategist, diplomat, writer, and friend to the tribes of "arabs".The Lowell Thomas travelogues made Lawrence an international celebrity, a fate he loathed. So much so that he took no financial benefit from his fame, changed his name to Shaw, and re-enlisted in the Royal Air Force not as an officer, but as an aircraft mechanic. Yet he socialized with the likes of Winston Churchill, Noel Coward, and George Bernard Shaw. He loved motor bikes and speedboats and was an excellent photographer.Korda helps make sense of all this and places Lawrence in the context of his times. This is a wonderful read.

half of the chapters sum up and clarify Lawrence's autobiography Seven pillars of Wisdom. This autobiography also mages war on all things psychoanalotical, its a sharp veer from, say, Prince of our disorder. There is a lotof information, but Korda uses it to repedly gush about Lawrence's greatness, heroicness- if you buy this book don't expect any deep analysis.