Young Lawrence A Portrait of the Legend as a Young Man Synopsis
T. E. Lawrence was one of the most charismatic characters of the First World War; a young archaeologist who fought with the Arabs and wrote an epic and very personal account of their revolt against the Turks in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Yet this was not the first book to carry that iconic title. In 1914 the man who would become Lawrence of Arabia burnt the first Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a manuscript in which he described his adventures in the Middle East during the five years before the war. Anthony Sattin uncovers the story Lawrence wanted to conceal: the truth of his birth, his tortuous relationship with a dominant mother, his deep affection for an Arab boy, the intimate details of the extraordinary journeys he took through the region with which his name is forever connected and the personal reasons that drove him from being a student to becoming an archaeologist and a spy. Young Lawrence is the first book to focus on the story of T. E. Lawrence in his twenties, before the war, during the period he looked back on as his golden years. Using first-hand sources, museum records and Foreign Office documents, Sattin sets these adventures against the background of corrosive conflicts in Libya and the Balkans. He shows the simmering defiance of Arabs, Armenians and Kurds under Turkish domination, while uncovering the story of an exceptional young man searching for happiness, love and his place in the world until war changed his life forever.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781848549111 |
| Publication date: |
2nd July 2015 |
| Author: |
Anthony Sattin |
| Publisher: |
John Murray Publishers Ltd an imprint of John Murray General Publishing Division |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
336 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Biographies & Autobiographies
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Anthony Sattin Press Reviews
'Anthony Sattin knows a good story when he sees one. While most of Lawrence's biographers focus heavily on the war period, Sattin has grasped the importance of the years Lawrence spent in the Middle East beforehand, essential preparation for what followed. He has filled the ominous political background that Lawrence knew, but hardly mentioned in his letters home. As a travel writer enlarging on the writings of a forerunner, Sattin also often enriches Lawrence's account. I thoroughly enjoyed the result.'
- Jeremy Wilson, authorised Lawrence biographer
'Praise for Anthony Sattin's previous works .Anthony Sattin's study itself has a dreamlike quality ... he movingly reminds us of how, in the midst of life, those destined for greatness have no more idea where they are going than the rest of us.'
- Sunday Times
'It is a tribute to Sattin's knowledge of Egypt and his skill as a writer that he makes this counterpoint narrative seem so effortless. His protagonists circle without ever touching in a dance through the desert'
- Independent
'Sattin has written a brilliantly assured experiment in biography, a triumph of the historical imagination. Convincingly researched, informed by an unobtrusive first-hand knowledge of Egyptian places, compellingly skilful in the writing, the whole story is illuminated by Anthony Sattin's delicately perceptive sense of character in action.'
- Literary Review
'Anthony Sattin has excelled himself.'
- Conde Nast Traveller
'Absorbing, highly readable and in places ironically humorous, a well-rounded and definitive study.'
- Martin Booth, Sunday Times
'An extraordinary panorama of adventure, scholarship, intellectual enterprise and ideological conviction, enlivened by frequent splashes of eccentricity and beautifully written throughout.'
-Jan Morris
'A marvellous and brilliant book'
- William Dalrymple, Spectator
About Anthony Sattin
Anthony Sattin is a journalist, broadcaster and the author of several highly acclaimed books of history and travel including The Gates of Africa, Lifting the Veil and A Winter on the Nile. He is editorial advisor on Geographical Magazine, a contributing editor to Conde Nast Traveller and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He lives in London and the Middle East.
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