The Uncrowned King & the Desert Queen

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by Lorraine Tinsley
Paperback

An interesting boy. He is going to make a traveller... So observed explorer Gertrude Bell in 1911 on meeting T. E. Lawrence - a young Oxford archaeologist twenty years her junior, at the Hittite excavations led by their mentor David G. Hogarth in Carchemish, Turkey. Through extensive archival research in the Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle University, and in Oxford University's Magdalen College Archives, author Lorraine Tinsley casts fresh light on the mutual friendships between Bell, Lawrence and Hogarth. Newly discovered letters by Bell and Lawrence in Magdalen College's Hogarth Collection, transcribed by the author and published here for the first time, add intriguing insights to our previous understanding of the early stages of production of Lawrence's master work Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and of the personal and political conflicts that shaped their worldviews following the Great War. Through these findings, this book offers a deeper appreciation of the mutual affection and respect, and occasionally the exasperation and disappointment that coloured the friendship between 'Gerty' and her 'Beloved Boy' over the fifteen years of their acquaintance.