At the height of the first World War
battles raged across the Middle East.
An army of Arabs joined the war on the allied side.
The British had promised the Arabs independence if they would help defeat the Turks.
Fighting with the Arabs was an extraordinary English man: T.E. Lawrence.
He helped arm and direct the Arab campagin.
He told the Arabs the British government would garantee their independence.
if they fought on the British side.
But behind the scenes promises were being broken.
Lawrence knew the Arabs could only get their freedom
if they could win the race to Damascus.
October 1917.
Lawrence and the Arab army were concentrating their guerrilla attacks on the Hadjez railway,
disrupting the Turkish supply routes.
Four months since aerlier the Arabs had seized the strategic vital port of Aqaba.
So supplies now flowed freely to allied and Arab armies.
The victory had forced British commanders to take Lawrence and the Arab army seriously.
They were no longer an unpredictable side show.
But an inportant part of the overall campaign.
The Allies were preparing a new offensive
that would move north along the coast of Palestine towards Jerusalem.
The Arabs would take a parallel route,
forcing the Turks to fight on two fronts.
After Jerusalem, the goal was Damascus, the Arab political heart.
The Arab leadership, especially Faisal,
trusted that if the Turks could be defeated
and the Arabs marched into Damascus,
they could claim their independence.
Lawrence knew it was not so straightforward.
The Arabs had entered the war on the back of a British promise...
guaranteeing Arab independence if they helped the allies in the fight against the Turks.
The Arabs believed especially in the word of Great Britain.
They... they, you know... the word of Great Britain
was, uh... greatly respected.
What Lawrence now knew, but the Arabs did not,
was that the British had already broken that promise.
It was evident to me that if won the war, these promises were dead paper.
The British government had made a secret agreement with the French.
Called the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
It planned to carve up Arab land between Britain and France.
Leaving no place for Arab selve rule.
It was, to put it mildly, the greatest betrayal in...
or a breach of promise between the British and the Arabs
that has taken place in history.
Lawrence was finding it harder and harder to justify the lie
especially when he had to bury his Arab comrades.
An individual death is like a pebble dropped in water.
Rings of sorrow widened out from it.
We could not afford casualties.
By this point in the war,
the Arabs had already lost thousands of men.
They were killed in great numbers,
but their freedom was worth the sacrifices.
They believed in liberty, and they fought courageously and mightily, whatever the cost.
Lawrence was looking for a way out of the campaign.
Even before Aqaba the weight of the responsibility had threatened to overwhelm him.
Ridden with guilt,
he had scrawled his feelings into a message pad-
a note to his immediate superior.
I've decided to go off alone to Damascus hoping to get killed on the way.
For all sakes, clear up this show before it goes further.
We are calling them to fight for us on a lie,
and I can't stand it.
He never sent the note.
When all is said and done, Lawrence was a British subject
serving a British imperial interest.
He was a British officer, and he made no bones about that.
And I... I have respect for him for that.
Why should he serve somebody else?
He would be a traitor.
I had to join the conspiracy.
Arab help was necessary
to our cheap and speedy victory in the East.
He was helping the Arabs.
He was fighting with them.
He was doing his best for them,
because, you know, it was...
to me, it is so clear and it is so plain,
because if the Arabs win,
it will be the... a help for the British Empire.
And it's a war effort.
There was also a personal motive.
In the dedication of his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
Lawrence promised to win freedom for the person he loved.
I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars to earn you Freedom.
The dedication was to Dahoum,
Lawrence's friend from his days as an archaeologist.
Dahoum was now stranded in enemy territory.
Lawrence wrote that there was not a day
when he did not think of him.
Lawrence would spend the rest of the war
trying to fulfill the British promise-
his promise to the Arabs.
They had joined the war to win freedom.
Therefore for every reason, strategical, tactical, moral, we were going on.
The Arab army moved north,
ambushing trains and raiding Turkish outposts.
On November the 11th,
a detachment of the northern army of Sharif Faisal
attacked the railway and troop train.
At Tel el Sabab, two locomotives destroyed.
Turkish casualties, 100.
Arab casualties, seven men.
The Turks had put a price
on the heads of Lawrence, Auda and Faisal.
With every successful attack, it rose.
It was the sort of recognition that delighted Lawrence,
better, he said, than a medal, a knighthood from the king.
Lawrence now moved to a new base
in the ancient crusader castle at Azraq.
He was treading again in the footsteps of his heroes.
The early shepherd kings loved this place,
and Roman legionaries languished here in yet earlier times.
Azraq's unfathomable silence was steeped
in knowledge of wandering poets, champions and lost kingdoms.
It was magically haunted.
The presence of Lawrence and Faisal's army
made a huge impression on local people.
Mr. Lawrence and King Faisal were staying at Azraq here
issuing all the instructions from his headquarters.
In the upper room, you go up the stairs and pass through there.
On your way up, Mr. Lawrence and King Faisal
and my father stayed together for two years.
Lawrence wrote home to his mother.
You will be pleased to hear
I at last have a floor to sleep on and a roof over my head-
a stone roof, but a roof nonetheless.
With Azraq as their base,
the Arab forces launched themselves
into a new phase of the offensive,
picking out important strategic targets.
Lawrence began to seek out danger.
In some ways, he said, he was testing his legitimacy
for the role as leader of the Arabs.
I'm not going to last out this game much longer.
Nerves going and temper wearing thin.
But we ride on.
Lawrence traveled north to scout for an attack
on the important Turkish stronghold at Dar'a.
In 1917, Dar'a was a vital railway junction
on the route to Damascus.
The Arabs would need to capture it before they could advance.
For Lawrence, Dar'a would become a place
of the very darkest memories.
The only account of what happened is Lawrence's own,
and it is the subject of considerable controversy.
He described it as "that night I shouldn't tell you about,
because decent men don't talk about such things. "
He said it wounded him worse than any other event of the war.
The soldiers were suspicious.
Lawrence claimed he was a Circassian from the north
to explain away his blue eyes.
But the Turks were unconvinced, and according to Lawrence
they had things on their minds.
He began to fawn on me,
saying how white and fresh I was,
how fine my hands and feet.
I thought he was going to kill me...
but he only pulled up a fold of flesh over my ribs
and worked the point through.
Then he told the corporal to take me out
and teach me everything.
I locked my teeth to endure this thing,
which lapped itself round me
like a flaming wire about my body.
A delicious warmth, probably sexual,
was swelling through me.
I knew next that I was being dragged about by two men as if to split me in two,
while a third man rode me astride.
That night I gave away
the only possession we are born into life with-
our bodily integrity.
But then, Lawrence claims,
the Turks dressed his wounds and allowed him to escape.
It was one of several elements of the story
that have led people to doubt his account.
I think that Dar'a was an invention.
It never happened to my... to my own research, to my mind.
I went myself to Dar'a later on and I met people
and I spent two nights in the Houran around Dar'a
and I am convinced he never went to Dar'a.
It never happened.
It was an invention.
I don't think the rape at Dar'a happened
in the way that Lawrence suggests it did.
I think that Lawrence probably had
some sort of homosexual encounter
whilst he was in Arabia.
It may have been a rape.
It may have been a situation
that he led himself into almost deliberately
which ended in some sort of, um, rape or something like it.
But I'm convinced, my own gut reaction-
and I've studied him for a long time-
is it didn't happen the way he suggested it did.
Some believe Lawrence invented the story
to represent the punishment he felt he deserved
for deceiving his Arab friends.
There was a wound
that was constantly feeding his activities,
feeding his need for sacrifice, for redemption,
for higher purpose, for fulfilling a vision,
and was constantly being repeated.
That wound was constantly being reactivated,
driving him to still more extreme, greater efforts
to fulfill that higher vision.
There was no escape for me.
I took up again my mantle of fraud in the East.
With my certain contempt for half measures,
I took it up completely.
Now British forces moved towards Jerusalem.
Ahead of the advance, the Turks abandoned the holy city.
Jerusalem fell.
The news reached Lawrence.
He hurried to be part of the celebrations.
For the man who modeled his early life on the Crusaders,
marching into Jerusalem with a Christian army,
freeing it from Ottoman rule would be a crowning moment.
In deference to history,
British commander in chief General Allenby
led the Allies into the city on foot.
Among the marchers is the small figure of T.E. Lawrence,
wearing a borrowed uniform.
He was suddenly a British officer again.
I think you can see where Lawrence's loyalties lay
perhaps in the way he decides to dress.
Sometimes he's there in all his magnificent Arab garb
with the... the golden headdress and all the rest of it,
dressed as an Arab prince.
Occasionally we see him in rather scruffy khaki.
And then quite often we see him between the two.
He's got his khaki on, but he's got a kaffiyeh and a headdress
and there's this sort of... you know, he's between the two.
He's standing as the bridge
between the Arabs and the British Empire.
And I suspect that's where he saw himself really.
The capture of Jerusalem
caused celebration among Christians around the world.
It brought the war in the East sharply to world attention.
This was the time of some of the worst defeats
on the Western Front.
Now at last the Allies had something to cheer about.
But for the Arabs,
the victory would have enormous repercussions.
A group of Zionists were lobbying the British government
to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
With the region now under their control,
the British felt able to dispose of it as they saw fit.
British foreign secretary Lord Balfour wrote a letter
to one of the Zionist leaders, Lord Rothschild.
In it he spelled out the British position.
His Majesty's Government view with favor
the establishment in Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people.
The declaration flew in the face
of the British promise made to Sharif Hussein-
the promise that Palestine would be Arab land.
Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary,
writes a letter to Lord Rothschild-
who at that time happens to be
a great financier living in Paris-
promising the land that he doesn't own,
promising it to someone who it doesn't belong.
The Arab army knew nothing of this promise.
The British continued to reassure the Arabs
that they would get their independence.
They even designed a flag for the new Arab nation.
Everything to keep them fighting the war.
Lawrence was also ignorant of this new secret deal.
Celebrating the victory with Emir Faisal,
he was back in his Arab guise.
Among those observing the celebrations was an American journalist called Lowell Thomas.
Thomas had been sent by the U.S. government to gather propaganda
that might encourage Americans to enter the war.
Lawrence was described to Thomas as the "uncrowned king of Arabia. "
It was a brand that Thomas would famously exploit.
Lowell Thomas spent eight days in the desert
filming Lawrence and the Arab army.
Lawrence could not have guessed
what those few days would mean for his future.
Lowell Thomas started the legend of Lawrence.
He was the man... he... as you know,
he's an American propagandist,
and he made... he started the legend.
Lowell Thomas' contribution to the Lawrence legend is absolutely critical.
I mean, people today don't realize
that "Lawrence of Arabia" didn't exist in the First World War.
Lawrence of Arabia was a creation
of a rather slick American journalist called Lowell Thomas.
With Jerusalem captured,
the push towards Damascus gathered momentum.
The British-led Allied forces headed in from the west.
The Arabs hurried up the eastern flank.
Lawrence now knew about the Balfour Declaration.
He realized that the odds on the Arabs
being granted their independence were lengthening all the time,
and the closer he led them to Damascus,
the closer came the moment when his deception would be exposed.
His only hope was to have the Arabs in Damascus
ahead of the other Allies, armed and secure.
Then perhaps Britain might be forced
to negotiate a fair peace.
As the combined forces
of the Allied and Arab armies neared Damascus,
the Turks realized they were beaten and fled.
Damascus was liberated.
The people met the Arab army with cheers, with flowers.
They were very happy.
They were rejoicing, dancing, clapping.
They thought that the day of liberation is the day of salvation.
They knew they had won their victory, their freedom.
They had won independence.
They were elated.
Emir Faisal was driven into the city as a conqueror.
Faisal had become the new national hero,
and people believed that this person was their liberator.
There would be arguments about which troops entered the city first-
British, Australian or Arab.
But it was the Arab flag,
given to them by the British government,
which flew over the city hall.
The race to Damascus had been won.
Lawrence had succeeded, but he was acutely aware
of the uncertainties that lay ahead for the Arabs.
At meetings between Allied and Arab leaders,
Faisal discovered the extent of the British double dealing,
and specifically he heard
about the Sykes-Picot agreement with the French.
Faisal objected strongly.
Allied commanders questioned Lawrence
about what he had told the Arabs.
Faisal walked out.
The two men who had fought together so hard for this day
now went their separate ways.
Lawrence makes no mention of this in Seven Pillars.
He says only that he was "exhausted. "
I made to Allenby
the only request I ever asked him for myself - leave to go.
In the end he agreed, and then at once I knew how much I was sorry.
By the time his days in Damascus are winding down,
He's a mess. I mean, he just wants to get out,
but he's already got in mind he's going to go fight.
The real battle's now going to be at the peace conference.
It's not going to be in the Middle East anymore.
He knows that.
So even thou he's seemingly living out...
what looks like his own personal desperation and exhaustion,
he's already planning for the next move.
Lawrence wrote a farewell letter to Cairo headquarters.
I'm off out of Egypt.
This old war is closing, and my use is gone.
My regards to the staff. We were an odd little set,
and we have, I expect, changed history in the Near East.
I wonder how the powers will let the Arabs get on.
For Lawrence, there was a bitter grief to come.
He received news that Dahoum, his Carchemish friend,
had died of typhoid just too soon
to hear of the victory Lawrence had won for him.
Death seemed my servant on the road,
till we were near and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.
As Lawrence arrived home,
Britain was celebrating the end of the war.
In government working committees were already discussing
how to reshape the map in the aftermath of the conflict.
Lawrence was called to brief the War Cabinet's Eastern Committee,
who would help decide the future of Arabia.
Gentlemen - Colonel Lawrence.
He presented his plan for the region,
complete with a new map,
the names of those he thought should rule
and a definition of the British Empire as a "partnership of nations".
He was at the height of his influence.
The committee would hear him out,
but he was far from certain that they would take his advice.
So Lawrence launched a high-profile lobbying campaign
to draw attention to the Arab cause.
Lawrence felt absolutely furious,
because he had persuaded men
to risk everything, to risk their lives.
He felt that all the promises he'd made
had been made in good faith
and that the Arabs essentially, and particularly Faisal,
had been deceived.
I think Lawrence felt really pissed off.
Lawrence's letters were published in the Times.
Sir, your correspondent wishes to draw the reader's attention
to the extraordinary courage
of the Arab nation's support of the British war.
Pledges were made in His Majesty's name
which our nation is beholden to meet.
The letters created tremendous waves in government circles.
But it was not enough.
Lawrence realized the tide was turning against him,
that elements in the government
were blocking moves for Arab independence.
He would have to make his arguments heard another way.
Lawrence traveled to Buckingham Palace
to join other heroes receiving their medals from King George.
For his achievements in the desert war,
he was to be presented with the Distinguished Service Order
and the Companionship of the Bath,
two of the highest awards a Briton could receive.
But when his moment came, Lawrence refused the honors.
Why he rejected his medals from the king is very simple.
The only way he could show his dissatisfaction
for what had transpired
was to say to the king, "No, thank you.
"I don't mean to offend you, Your Majesty,
but I really feel I can't take these awards from the state. "
I mean, a tremendous break with decorum.
English society was appalled.
It was an unprecedented snub for the king.
Lawrence had made his voice heard.
But the same newspapers that reported his royal insult
began to edit his letters.
The Times cut the most controversial sections,
and its editor wrote a column supporting the status quo.
The establishment was closing ranks.
Lawrence did persuade the British to invite Faisal to London;
perhaps with the man on the ground, people would talk.
Lawrence brokered a meeting that might seem extraordinary today.
He introduced Faisal to Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionists.
They had dinner in the Piccadilly home of Lord Rothschild
to discuss how the Jews and the Arabs might become allies,
to secure what both parties wanted from the postwar settlement.
As Faisal put it, "We are the two main branches of the same Semitic family. "
But the British government showed little interest.
Officials were more concerned about their own claims
than those of the Arabs.
Lawrence realized he would have to take the Arab cause
to the international arena.
"Everything," he wrote, "depends on the conference. "
The peace conference of the "war to end all wars"
had begun in Paris.
The French themselves would be the key obstacle to Arab aims.
They wanted Syria for themselves.
They even tried to stop Faisal from reaching Paris
and questioned his right to attend the conference.
With Lawrence's help, he argued his way into the proceedings.
U.S. president Woodrow Wilson arrived
with his famous 14 points, the principles that, he argued,
should allow peoples to govern themselves.
Point number 12 specifically called for the Arabs
to be given the opportunity of autonomous development.
Lawrence and Faisal would use this to argue their case,
but first they would have to persuade
the conference organizers to give them a hearing.
The Middle East wasn't the most important subject that was being discussed.
Remember, Europe has just had this terrible bloodletting
in the Somme and elsewhere,
and they had to have a reconstruction.
That was the real issue.
But Lawrence stole the limelight.
He was, as usual, making the most of a situation
and he was playing with important people,
and he tried to get Faisal's issues pushed up the agenda, and he succeeded.
Lawrence and Faisal presented the Arab case to the Council of World Leaders.
They could do no more.
The council would now meet and deliberate,
and the Arabs must wait for the outcome.
Lawrence was acutely aware that this was history in the making.
In Paris, he began to write Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
"The dreamers of the day are dangerous men,
for they may act out their dreams with open eyes to make it possible.
This I did.
I meant to make a new nation. "
The peace conference had reached its conclusion.
The delegates signed the Treaty of Versailles.
For the Arabs President Wilson's 14 points would seem a distant memory.
Well, it was 14 points literally
for everybody else except for the Arabs.
The victors had drawn new maps for the postwar world.
The Arabs were pushed south out of Syria, where the French won their claim.
West out of Mesopotamia, where the British took power.
and out of Palestine and Jerusalem,
where the Zionists would have a homeland
under a British mandate.
The borders were not designed to meet with Arab interests
or with Arab hopes and aspirations.
They were a reflection of imperial designs
between the British and the French on the one hand
and also the Zionists on the other hand.
The big issue was Palestine.
When the British had made their prewar promises to the Arabs,
Palestine had been included
in territory that was to come under Arab rule.
The Arab leader, Sharif Hussein, refused to accept any settlement
that did not include all Arab territory.
But the Arabs believed and they still believe
that Great Britain honestly promised
that it will... it will recognize
a united and independent Arab state in the East.
That British promise, I think to a large degree,
until the moment that we are living
and perhaps well into maybe the next hundred years or more,
will determine the affairs of the Arab world and Europe
and the Middle East.
The Arabs decided to defy the superpowers
and take the initiative and ignore the Versailles Treaty.
They declared self-government.
For the first time in five centuries, the Arabs were free of foreign rule.
Emir Faisal was crowned king.
The Arab dream became reality.
They thought that they will have prosperity; they will have democracy;
they will have new schools, new roads, new hospitals;
the West will treat them differently.
So this was the point at which the Arabs thought...
they had finally begun to build a new future for themselves
and become masters of their own house.
Five months later, the dream was over.
The French army arrived in Syria to enforce the treaty.
Barbed wire went up in the streets.
The French threatened air strikes if the Arabs resisted.
King Faisal was ordered to leave.
He was left to wait for a train like any other passenger.
As he traveled through Transjordan,
Faisal was met by a company of British soldiers.
He didn't know if they were there to arrest him or to honor him.
He was invited to inspect them-
a last gesture on his way into exile.
Lawrence had rushed home from Paris
on news that his father was gravely ill. He was too late.
He was left to mourn for his father and for the Arabs.
We lived many lives in those swirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves.
Then the new world dawned.
The old men came out again and took our victory
to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew.
Youth would win, but had not learned to keep,
and it was pitiably weak against age.
We stammered that we worked for a new haven and a new earth,
and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.
Faisal believed that Lawrence was a good friend to the Arabs,
but he knew... Faisal was a statesman-
he knew that Lawrence was an employee,
employed by his government.
So he is, uh... he shouldn't be blamed
because he was... he's not the government.
I think that he thought that the Arabs had been sold down the river.
I think he realized that he played his part in that
and that generally he was so concerned by what had happened
that he just wanted to run away from it.
Ironically, at his moment of defeat, at his personal lowest ebb,
Britain and the world were about to celebrate Lawrence as a star.
Lowell Thomas, the American who had tracked Lawrence in the desert,
brought his film lecture about the desert war to London.
It would turn Lawrence into a prototype matinee idol.
He was flattered and appalled by his celebrity.
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail.
A friend wrote that he liked to be recognized but not to let people see.
He had a genius for backing into the limelight.
He had become the hero he always dreamed of being.
I think there are lots of people in life
who may have aspired to... to become the hero,
to become the star, whatever it might be
and who, once they'd got there, have found it was hollow.
And I think in Lawrence's case, all the more so,
because it wasn't just the case of him becoming the hero;
it was a case of him becoming the hero
at great cost to other people, which he realized.
He wrote that he had thrown away his medals
for someone to find one day and to wonder at their history.
Lawrence had retreated to Oxford and the safety of the academic world
when he was contacted by Winston Churchill.
Churchill had been appointed colonial secretary
and told to sort out the chaos in the East.
He offered Lawrence a job as his adviser.
It would be Lawrence's last effort in Arabia,
his last chance at redemption.
Churchill, Lawrence and other Middle East experts
traveled to Cairo for another conference.
Britain was again carving out new nations on the map,
but this time Lawrence would have a direct say
in where the borders were drawn
and a chance to make good on his promises.
In Transjordan, Amir Abdullah took the throne.
In the new nation of Iraq, Faisal would be king.
When Faisal was established in Iraq and Abdullah in Jordan,
the nations saw in Britain a spark of conscience.
Even though things were not as they had hoped for,
it was something.
Lawrence was pleased with what he had achieved for the Arabs.
He wrote that Britain had quit Arabia having kept her promises.
I don't think that was a true statement
or an honest statement on the part of Lawrence, to put it mildly.
I think he says that because he's trying to feel okay
about something which is not okay.
I think that's false, I think he's...
Like many of us, I think we want to believe
certain things are... are true when they're not.
I mean we... we'll often say, "Well, I did okay.
I... I acquitted myself all right here,"
and we kind of know we didn't.
The Arabs saw the Cairo settlement as window dressing.
They felt they had fought a war for nothing.
Now they rebelled.
The British and French responded with air strikes and gas attacks.
Tens of thousands of Arabs died.
Baghdad and Damascus lay in ruins.
I think what strikes you when you look back at this, you think nothing changes...
all the issues are the same issues.
You know, you've got Zionism, Arab nationalism, tribesmen who are fanatical,
the concerns about how you're going to suppress that fanaticism.
It's all the same issues.
Lawrence was near to a breakdown.
"I am so tired. I want to lie down and sleep and not wake up. "
For eight years, he'd been through this horror
of constant tension, constant violence.
He was near to emotional breakdown,
and the toll of being so involved
in close-up events of violence
for which he took exaggerated responsibility
eventually did drive him out of a prominent role in public life.
Name?
Ross, John Hume, 352087, sir.
Lawrence would spend his middle age in hiding,
trying to escape his celebrity and responsibility
by joining the ranks of the Royal Air Force.
What are these?
Superficial wounds, sir.
Answer my question.
A barbed wire tear, sir, over the fence.
God.
And these?
Punishment?
Persuasion, sir.
The hero of Damascus, the uncrowned king of Arabia
would spend his middle age trying to shun responsibility
and avoid the attention of the press.
If ever there was a man squeezed right out dry
by overexperience, then it's me.
I don't think I'll be fit for anything ever again.
He wrote to friends that although he struggled with the drudgery of barrack life,
he wouldn't leave the RAF for any job he was offered.
But the calm wouldn't last.
Within months of his enlistment, the press found him.
He was dismissed from the RAF, because his presence there
might cause the service an embarrassment.
"Damn the press," he wrote.
He changed his name again and spent the next decade
moving from air force to army and back again,
from posting to posting,
trying to find somewhere he could be anonymous.
He rented a small cottage in Dorset, Cloud's Hill,
which he used as a hideaway when on leave.
The Greek inscription above the door reads "Does not care. "
But his letters were full of doubts
about the justness of the Middle East settlement.
Surely my share in helping to settle the Middle East
atones me for my misdeeds in the war.
I think so anyway.
If Iraq continues to put up a decent show
over three generations, then the revolt was worthwhile.
But Faisal's line did not last.
He ruled for just ten years, then died of heart disease in a Swiss clinic.
His son reigned until 1958,
when he and his entire family were executed in a revolution.
30 years after Lawrence's death, a man came forward
with an account of how Lawrence paid him for beatings.
It has been largely accepted by those who have studied the evidence.
Some suggest that Lawrence was seeking to punish himself,
others that it was for sexual gratification.
We have to be compassionate about Lawrence.
He had certainly seen a great deal of death
and had killed people and watched people being killed,
and that must have had quite an effect on him, taken quite a toll.
And you combine that perhaps with repressed homosexuality-
who knows? - and you get some very strange reactions.
In 1935, aged 46,
Lawrence left the RAF and his service life for the last time.
He planned a quiet retirement at Cloud's Hill.
But with Britain and Europe
again facing the prospect of war,
the hero of Arabia was in demand.
Churchill wanted him to command the nation's home defense.
The British fascists wanted him to join their leadership.
Others wanted him to act as ambassador for peace.
Lawrence- T.E. Shaw, as he now called himself-
would not be prized from his cottage.
He sent cards announcing his retreat from the world.
Wild mares would not drag me from here now.
Lawrence's purest escape was speed.
He was thrilled at driving his powerful bikes
as hard as they would go.
Lawrence liked speed because it stopped him thinking.
He found a freedom - a freedom from the world of the intellect
and a descent into the world of feeling, and freedom with it.
He loved speed.
He was a speed freak.
On May the 13th, 1935,
Lawrence rode to the post office to send a telegram.
He was on his way home when he lost control of the bike,
swerved to avoid two cyclists and crashed.
He never regained consciousness.
Lawrence died six days later.
The press reported his death like today they might cover the death of a superstar.
There were reports of plots and assassination;
Lawrence was simply too great a character
for people to accept he could die in an ordinary accident.
From the Arabs who knew him, there was grief, too.
Men from tribes and towns where Lawrence had lived and fought sent their respects.
"Tell them in England his heart was steel;"
"of manhood, the man;"
in freedom, free; a mind without an equal. "
There were representatives from King George, ambassadors, generals and statesmen.
Churchill among them.
"Lawrence," Churchill said, "was one of those beings"
"whose pace of life was faster and more intense than what is normal,"
"So he flew best in the hurricane. "
"In the heroic period, he found himself in perfect relation both to men and events. "
"He will live in history. "