21-05-2025
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
