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.

T. E. Lawrence

Have you heard of the great T. E. Lawrence or as he was famously known as Lawrence of Arabia? Look up the Wikipedia article on him. I have read his biography, I have read his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and I have seen the great movie that David Lean made on his life, The Lawrence of Arabia. He was surely a very fascinating character and a very inspiring one. Then he couldn't get good grades for his BA, he was asked to write a dissertation and he chose his topic, 'The influence of the crusades on the medieval military architecture of Europe' and he went off to Syria to physically study the castles there and it is said that he walked 1100 miles in the space of three months and completed his work!

This is his quote on my website and I reproduce it below:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
--- Seven Pillars of Wisdom