On Thomas Edward Lawrence

Well, we spoke of Queen Rania of Jordan and if we refer to Jordan, how can I not refer to an inspiring figure about whom I wrote in an earlier post, Thomas Edward Lawrence? My earlier post is here: http://roomynaqvy.blogspot.com/2008/05/t-e-lawrence.html

Anyway, for the sake of some trivia, T E Lawrence was born on August 16. That's his birth day.

You can read a pretty long and engaging article on this famous and legendary man on the HistoryNet website. This was also published in the Military History. It is a pretty long and a very comprehensive article. Another small biographical article is at http://telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/life/biog_lawrence.shtml and I thought this small biographical article was quite impressive because I learned a couple of new things here. I have been a fan of this figure for quite some time but I learned from this article that he wrote another book called The Mint in addition to his well known, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I would like to quote a small passage from this article:

Both in his books and letters, Lawrence was an acute observer of people, places, and events. Among the most memorable passages in Seven Pillars are the vivid descriptions of desert landscapes and of the Bedouin irregulars whose life he shared. The Mint, written in a very different style to Seven Pillars, is, like Solzenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a work of observation written by a highly intelligent man who found himself effectively imprisoned. Lawrence distilled its spare descriptions from events that he had witnessed over and over again. Both Seven Pillars and The Mint have for many years ranked among Penguin's Modern Classics.

So, here we have a cross reference between The Mint and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Lawrence was quite involved with the Middle East.