Product Description

As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no 'Boys Own Paper' tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and Joyce.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24348 in Books
• Published on: 1997-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

Book Information
'The dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.'

Seven Pillars of Wisdom remains--like its enigmatic creator--brilliant and controversial. It describes, in the words of E. M. Forster, 'the revolt in Arabia against the Turks, as it appeared to an Englishman who took part. Round this tent-pole of a military chronicle T. E. has hung an unexampled fabric of portraits, descriptions, philosophies, emotions, adventures, dreams. He has brought to his task a fastidious scholarship, an impeccable memory, a style nicely woven of Oxfordisms and Doughty, an eye unparalleled . . . a profound distrust of himself, a still profounder faith.'

'As certain of immortality as anything written in English for half a century' --John Buchan

'It may be said of him that he suffered, in his own person, the neurotic ills of an entire generation' --Christopher Isherwood

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Customer Reviews

Lawrence of Arabia from his own point of view
Having been a geat fan of the David Lean film ever since my father took me as a 7 year old boy to see it when it was first released, I had intended to read Lawrence's own account of the events covered by the film for a long time. The book itself is a mixture of autobiographical recounting of the events covered by the film and a travelogue interspersed with almost essay type observations by Lawrence on a wide variety of subjects including the plight of the Arabs, their culture, his own motivation and the wartime life of soldiers in general. Most of the book is descriptive with very little in the way of dialogue and it can at times become very difficult to persevere with, particularly during the author's sometimes extreme moments of navel-gazing. However, the persistent reader is taken on a unique journey with Lawrence through his adventures, middle eastern culture and the spectacular desert scenery of the area. When the time came to part I was rather sorry that the journey was over as Lawrence is, if nothing else, an extremely knowledgeable guide. Taken as an adjunct to the film (which takes a certain amount of artistic licence with the facts) the book deepens one's understanding of its political, geographical and personal context and provides a unique insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the man himself.

Best Ever
Brilliant. T E Lawrence poured his soul into this magnificently crafted autobiography. It takes you from his arrival in Cairo as an upstart academic, through his dramatic evolution into a desert soldier/strategist and leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, to his ultimate failure to win justice for the people he'd grown to be part of. Lawrence was a gifted writer as well as an extraordinary soldier and I was fascinated by the insights that run through it: into his political naivety, his ambivalent loyalties, and the hints of concern (almost certainly ill-founded) about his own mental state. The combination of high politics and personal danger, played out in the dramatic and mysterious Arab world as it meets the West is quite magnificent.

The writing style is nineteenth century and the language and prose may be unfamiliar to many but this is the most rewarding book I have read. It's the one I unhesitatingly offer as the best ever.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom - A stunning read
Whilst travelling through Wadi Rum in Jordan a few years ago i was haunted in my mind by images of the enigmatic character that was Lawrence of Arabia; part legend, part myth, part wrong person in the wrong place at the right time.

To read this book is to know the man, the journeys, the politics, the battles. Although he himself admitted to his own ambiguity and uselessness as a British Pawn in the middle east, this book goes some way to dispel the Myth.

A must for anyone who is interested in the middle east, british / arab politics and a very colourful man