Andrew's Reviews > Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

This is not the David Lean film of a similar title (although its heft is close to the film's length - should come with a musical entr'acte). It's a magnificently researched tome that follows the famous T.E. Lawrence along with other notable gentlemen whose fingerprints still mark the Middle East.

Opening before the war, and epiloguing after the Paris peace conferences, there is surprisingly little desert warfare in the book. Lawrence doesn't hit his camel-riding stride until early 1917, which gives him just shy of two years in the saddle. But, steeped in the region's history and culture for nearly a decade before, his deeds of that time propelled him into legend. Outside of those famous years, Lawrence is enmeshed in the endless duplicities and machinations of the Great Powers, often finding or placing himself at the centre of events and shaping them according to his own peculiar and shifting view of the world. Those familiar with the "Great Game" of the British Raj will instantly recognize its transplantation to this corner of the world. The second part of the subtitle, Making of the Modern Middle East may be a bit of a stretch - Anderson seems to throw it in towards the end - but the first part, War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, is entirely accurate. The common phrase "fit of absence of mind" used to describe British Imperialism cannot be used here. They knew (or at least different departments knew different things) exactly what they were doing, and few had any qualms about committing to contradictory treaties and promises. It will take a while, if it ever happens, before another author cleans up the nearly villainous image of Britain drawn here in what will become the definitive book about the period.

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