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Journal
of the T. E. Lawrence Society Vol. XII, No. 1 Autumn 2002 Edited by Philip Kerrigan V. S. Pritchett, 'T. E. Lawrence: The Aesthete in War' (Reprinted
from The Tale Bearers, Random
House, New York, 1980.) Although a novelist and a critic, it is as a writer of short stories that V. S. Pritchett achieved literary distinction. The Oxford Companion to English Literature notes that the stories 'are distinguished by their wide social range, shrewd observation of the quirks of human nature, and humane irony.' Prichett also wrote a number of literary essays on eminent persons including two on Lawrence. The later one, 'T. E. Lawrence: the Aesthete in War', is reprinted here.
Born
in Ipswich, Pritchett left school at an early age and after taking a
number of jobs became a journalist. He was fond of travelling and
eventually settled in London to concentrate on his writing. He
frequently contributed to The New
Statesman. In 1975 he received a knighthood. Geoffrey Syer, '"Morris was a Giant": The Quest of T. E. Lawrence' (Reprinted
from the Journal of the William
Morris Society, Spring 1994.) The
effect William Morris had on Lawrence is the subject of Geoffrey Syer's
article. Lawrence was impressed after visiting a Norman chapel at Broad
Campden in the Cotswolds, converted by Ananda Coormaraswamy. It was hung
with Morris’s tapestries, and a collection of Kelmscott Press books,
including the Chaucer, were on
display. Morris’s craftsmanship appealed to Lawrence, but above all it
was his writings that gave him the greatest pleasure. Philip Kerrigan: 'Letters from China' The correspondence between Lawrence and his mother reveals the affection each had for each other, which was especially evident when they were separated by long distances.
The
Lawrences' house at Mienchu Four
letters from Sarah, when she was in China with her eldest son
Robert, are published here for the first time with three photographs
(also unpublished) of their house and the missionary hospital at Mienchu,
Szechwan. Captain H. A. Corbett: 'A Critic in Action' 'A
Critic in Action', sets out to put the record straight insofar as David
Lean's film, Lawrence of Arabia, portrays
a historical event. Historical films are not noted for their accuracy.
Film makers are primarily interested in providing the public with
entertainment that will appeal to a very large number of people so that
box office receipts will repay the enormous expenditure involved and
provide shareholders with a bounteous return. John
Knowles points out in the next article that the film would cost more
than the Arab Revolt and take longer to make than it had taken Lawrence
and the Arabs to break the Turkish Empire. So it is not surprising that
historical accuracy has taken a back seat. The
trouble arises when a film becomes a great box office success. The
powerful influence over film and television viewers is considerable. For
many the effect is as great, or greater than, that experienced by the
audiences at Lowell Thomas's Travelogues of eighty years ago. Without
David Lean's film it is doubtful if the man in the street would have
heard of the Arab Revolt. The film has become, for many, their sole
source of information. There is a need to rectify the inaccuracies that
have been given such wide publicity. John Knowles: 'All-out in the Desert' John
Knowles was born in September 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia and
received a BA from Yale University in 1949. He travelled widely through
the Middle East and is best known for his novel A
Separate Peace (1960) which won the William Faulkner Foundation
Award and the Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters: it was made into a film in 1972. John Knowles died in November
2001. Previous: Contents of Vol. XI, No. 2 Next: Contents of Vol. XII, No. 2 You can
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