Latest news with #PeterOToole
Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
A sprinkling of sublime for TE Lawrence's grave
There is that 'great man' moment in David Lean's cinematic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia when Peter O'Toole's Lawrence is trying to persuade his sceptical Bedouin lieutenant (Omar Sharif) that it is indeed possible to cross hundreds of miles of waterless desert and take the fortified port of Aqaba, held by the Turks, from the landward side. 'Aqaba is over there,' he says, pointing into the furnace. 'It's only a matter of going.' That journey in 1917, the crossing of the uncrossable, of what Sharif's character calls the 'Devil's Anvil', was the defining moment for Thomas Edward Lawrence. His legend grew from life ended not with a Turkish bullet or a last drop of stagnant water but at the age of 46 with a
Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Mysterious painting of army cadet identified as Lawrence of Arabia
A painting of a young army cadet on a beach has been identified as TE Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, who was famously portrayed in a 1962 film starring Peter O'Toole. The work by Henry Scott Tuke has been kept in Lawrence's Dorset cottage, Clouds Hill, for 60 years, gathering bat guano and urine, after his home and painting were bequeathed to the National Trust by his family. Lawrence himself was killed near by in a motorcycle accident in 1935. The trust has long wondered whether the painting of an army recruit, stripping off to go into the sea, could be of Lawrence. It was signed by Tuke, a Cornish artist and Royal Academician, who gained notoriety for portraying young men in the
