Ned Lawrence was only 5ft 5in tall but, to Michael Korda, he is a giant of the 20th century. Hero is an apt title for this 762-page doorstep of a book, though it might as easily have been called “Hero Worship”, so completely is the author under the spell of his subject. He even admits he only bought a motorbike and joined the RAF because Lawrence did. Korda does not say whether he is also a non-smoking, teetotal vegetarian like his hero, but then, as he would be the first to admit, few could come up to all of Lawrence of Arabia’s exacting and ascetic standards.
Thomas Edward Lawrence – Ned to his family – was, Korda tells us, “capable of enduring hardship and pain beyond what most men would even want to contemplate” and it earned him respect from the desert to Downing Street. Add to that a fine and far-seeing mind, subtract his attitude to sex as repulsive, and you have in Korda’s eyes the perfect man, as long as you did not want to sleep with him.But there are some sweeping generalisations in this book which I question. Are the roadside bombs and suicide vests of today’s insurgents in the Middle East really the “legacies” of Lawrence because before he came along high explosives were unknown to the Arabs? Or would they have worked out by now how to use them as the best offensive weapons against highly-trained and well-equipped Western soldiers? Is the comparison with Princess Diana a touch hyperbolic, despite the obvious similarities of both being the most photographed celebrities of their generations before being killed in road accidents?
Lawrence was never a respecter of rank and was as at ease talking to King George V as to a hut full of RAF recruits. But he detested physical contact with other human beings – and even avoided shaking hands when he could. He was virtually asexual and probably died a virgin, although in later life he enjoyed being beaten and found a burly soldier for the purpose. How much this was due to the flogging – and homosexual rape – to which he was subjected by Turkish soldiers Korda wisely leaves to the psychologists, but he observes that what haunted Lawrence for the rest of his life was the realisation that he took pleasure from the ordeal.
The most interesting part of the book is when Lawrence has left Arabia and tries to undo the Sykes-Picot agreement slicing up Arab land between the British and the French. In Sir Mark Sykes, Britain chose a negotiator who was more misguided than malicious, an example “of a fatal British ability to see both sides of a dispute in an area of the world where there are only absolutes.” So the Middle East “was carved up like a carcass by a careless butcher, with the Arabs being thrown the parts that nobody wanted to eat”. Lawrence’s vision, claims Korda, could have avoided much of the misery which has plagued the region ever since.
He would have created an independent Kurdish state in Mesopotamia – solving one of the problems of modern Iraq. His plans for a state under joint Arab-Jewish control, with freedom of religion and unlimited Jewish immigration, in return for technological and commercial expertise, might also have countered one of today’s most pressing threats to world peace. And Lawrence would have spread oil wealth around rather than putting it in the hands of a few politically backward and autocratic regimes.
There is humour in this book. In his days as an intelligence officer in Cairo, Lawrence was responsible for collecting information on the 80 divisions of the Turkish army only one of which, he joked, was “really settled – the one we ‘defeat’ from time to time on the canal is located in the Caucasus by the Russians, at Pardima by Athens, in Adrianople by Bulgaria, at Midia by Romania, and in Baghdad by India. The locations of the other 39 regular and 40 reserve divisions is less certain.”
Lawrence even threw his considerable energy into designing special stamps to give the Arab Revolt its own identity, and was proud of the final touch of flavoured gum. But the gum was so tasty the Arabs licked it off and then couldn’t stick the stamps to the envelopes. While serving as lowly Aircraftman 338171 Ross after the war his new friend Noel Coward dryly asked in a letter: “May I call you 338?”
Circumstances played a part in turning Lawrence into the Hero of the title. The horror of mechanised, muddy, total war on the Western Front produced a desire to find a dashing adventurer away from the trenches. The British came up with Lawrence while the Germans had the Red Baron, air ace Manfred von Richthofen. There is no doubt Lawrence was a remarkable individual. He could curb Arab disorder and looting without raising his voice “like the hypnotic influence of a lion tamer”, according to one witness.
And he was not just a warrior on a camel but incorporated armoured cars and aircraft into his thinking, becoming an innovator of what we now call combined operations. In the RAF, he revolutionised the design of high-speed rescue launches and many pilots shot down over the Channel in 1940 owed their lives to him.
Korda makes no apology for being a cheerleader for Team Lawrence. He comes to praise Caesar not to bury him and this fascinating, absorbing and beautifully written book is the proud result. If Lawrence of Arabia was not already a legend, Hero would certainly ensure he became one.
