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Lot 110

LAWRENCE (T.E.)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £1,875 inc. premium

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LAWRENCE (T.E.)

Autograph letter signed ("T.E.S."), to Sir Ernest Dowson ("Dear E.M.D."), about Palestine ("...A pleasant country, spoiled for the while by discontent...and I don't expect you to linger there over-long...") and his imminent move to the RAF ("...The fates are transferring me to the R.A.F., which pleases me. Somehow the difference between the Army and the Air is the difference between earth and air, and I enjoy the freedom of the latter. We make all these fancy distinctions in our mind. I go up today to Uxbridge [R.A.F. Camp], where I will probably be for three months, the length of a recruit's course. And after that, God knows..."), 2 pages, two punch-holes to blank upper margin, 8vo, Clouds Hill, 18 August 1925

Footnotes

'A PLEASANT COUNTRY, SPOILED FOR THE WHILE BY DISCONTENT': Lawrence on Palestine. Sir Ernest Dowson, recipient of this letter, had been Director-General of the Survey of Egypt and Lawrence's immediate superior at Cairo prior to the Arabian campaign. In 1923 he had been appointed special adviser on land questions in the newly created mandated territories of Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. Lawrence's transfer to the RAF that same day is something he had been working towards ever since he had been forced out of it two and a half years earlier. This letter is not published in The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett (1938) or The Letters of T.E. Lawrence, edited by Malcolm Brown (1988); nor is it listed on the T.E. Lawrence Studies calendar of his letters (at telawrence.net).

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