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game.

By Eugenia Thornton

Lawrence of Arabia gets a fair shake

fact. The famous episode of flagellation and homosexual rape by the Turks at Deraa never took place, what did occur occurred at the hands of Lawrence's Arab lover, Sharif Ali. The motorcycle accident which killed Lawrence may not have been an accident at all but a planned murder.

T. E. Lawrence was a self-created med Any number can still play. Only last year Dr. John E. Mack wrote what seemed then to be the definitive Lawrence biography at least until the official biography by Jeremy Wilson (chosen by the Lawrence Trust) might appear.

Now, Desmond Stewart a distinguished Arabist and resident of the Middle East for almost 30 years, a man who has had access to much Lawrence material previously unavailable has written an honest, sympathetic, astonishing biography which separates Lawrentian fact from Lawrentian fiction more completely than any other has done.

Stewart's research does not denigrate the work of other good biographers. He simply has gone beyond them, partly through his close friendships with Arab experts on Lawrence and partly through his unusual opportunity to delve into the Bonn State Archives and to study at length the papers of David Hogarth, Lawrence's archeological mentor. Hogarth was also Lawrence's instructor in espionage and his close confidant for many years.

Most of us know the story of the early years of Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935) and the effect they had on his later life. He agonized over the fact that he was illegitimate. His parents had never married because of the existence of his Irish "county" father's first wife.

To live with the woman he loved, a working class girl named Sara Maden, who had been a housemaid in his family, Thomas Chapman changed his name to Lawrence when he was about 40, moved with his "wife" to the environs of Oxford, and there reared their five sons, second of whom became Lawrence of Arabia,

T. E. Lawrence was always distressed by his small stature. He began early to cast himself as hero of his own life, romancing, dreaming, creating a fantasy self which grew over the years to be more real to him than reality itself.

Stewart appears to have exploded forever many Lawrence myths. Lawrence was not particularly fluent in Arabic. He was less than expert in desert warfare; he. was not the liberator of Damascus, as he claimed, but rode in peacefully after the.

The curious thing is that after all the myths and fantasies are sifted and separated and we sit staring at the truth, Lawrence still seems brave, adventurous, reckless and, in many ways, admirable. If he is no longer a hero he is splendidly human, his very weaknesses prove to have strength of their own.

Only a genius could have created T. E. Lawrence, and he did it himself. His fibs might never have mattered much if post-war politics had not made Middle Eastern affairs so important. His sexual tastes horrified the establishment branches of government who feared that public idolatry might turn to public hating if they were discovered.

I wonder but perhaps so. And in that case the government's willingness to let Lawrence turn himself into a private soldier and its encouragement of his chosen obscurity is more easily understood than before.

This biography of T. E. Lawrence is intelligent, serious and for all its deflation of Lawrence's pretensions, funda-

mentally generous and. understanding. Desmond Stewart has written a superb biography of the most enigmatic man in contemporary history.

Eugenia Thornton recently appeared as Cleveland (Channel 25) hostess on "Fall of Eagles," a historical document on PBS-TV.