The British soldier and author Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888-1935), known as Lawrence of Arabia, coordinated the Arab Revolt against the Turks with British military operations. He became a legendary figure, and it is difficult to assess his life accurately.

It seems established that T. E. Lawrence was born on Aug. 15, 1888, at Remadoc, North Wales, one of five sons of Thomas Robert Chapman, a landowner of County Meath, Ireland, and Sarah Madden, for whom Chapman had forsaken his legal wife. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lawrence, as they came to be known, wandered from Ireland to Scotland to Brittany and back to England. In 1896 the family settled in Oxford, where young Thomas and his brothers were sent to Oxford High School. In time they also attended meetings of the Oxford Archaeological Association, and Lawrence, much interested in early pottery, came to the notice of D. G. Hogarth, archeologist and keeper...