LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 671, 16 May 1952, Page 19

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

F modern legends that which concerns "Lawrence of Arabia" is perhaps the most. remarkable. For although it has all the romantic and dramatic aspects of a good , legend, it is also mainl true. Some td in a he won that special distinc~ tion which couples their name with a region and which induces the public to pronounce the title with a somewhat awed pause after the nameScott of the Antarctic, Kitchener of Khartoum,

Lawrence of Arabia. Biographies of ‘thése mén may ~sound ‘like movie’ scripts but the facts are all recorded in the history books. Listeners who hear next week’s episode of This Was the Week at 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21, from the four ZB stations, will get some indication of Thomas Edward _ Lawrence’s amazing contribution to

history. In this dramatised story of Lawrence’s part in the war against the Turks, and his short life after it was successfully completed, is presented as something of a tragedy, for after the war Britain’s commitments to powerful allies forced her to disregard the promises that Lawrence had made to the Arabs. Defeated by these circumstances Lawrence declined to accept any honours and, to escape publicity, changed his name to Shaw and entered the Air Force. But he could not forget the

people he had helped, the people who had helped him and his nation-"What price an Englishman’s word... . what a fate that I should be the instrument for such an unthinkable deception." Now that Lawrence is dead and the problems he sought to solve have given way to new ones, only the memory of a strange genius remains to capture the imagination of readers and _ radio audiences.