The plates for Lawrence's masterpiece were one of the most technically demanding and expensive aspects of the privately-printed subscribers' edition issued in 1926, one print necessitating the use of 23 colours, an unheard of extravagance. Lawrence chose to make his publication a magnificent visual feast as well as a literary tour-de-force, commissioning illustrations from some of the best-known artists of the period – Eric Kennington, Augustus John, William Roberts, Paul Nash and William Rothenstein, amongst others. | SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM, A TRIUMPH | Sold for £52,700 incl premium Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) is prized as one of the greatest English books of the 20th century, ostensibly a record of Lawrence’s experiences marshalling the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire in the First World War, but also a deeply lyrical personal odyssey, ‘a testimony to his vision and persistence and a fulfilment of his desire to write an epic which might stand comparison in scale and linguistic elegance with his beloved Morte d’Arthur and C.M.
Liddell Hart - “a supreme artist of war.T.E. Soon nicknamed “Prince Dynamite,” Lawrence showed himself to be - in the words of military historian B.H.
Highly mobile fighters on camelback, he argued, could strike the enemy unexpectedly, then quickly disappear into the desert they knew so well. Surprisingly, the young Oxford graduate, not yet 30, first earned the trust of Feisal, then persuaded the Bedouins to adopt hit-and-run battle tactics. Because Lawrence had spent time on archaeological digs and could speak Arabic, he was commissioned as a liaison between the British army and the ragtag rebel forces. At roughly the same time, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali inaugurated an independence movement - largely spearheaded by two of his sons, Ali and Feisal - to break free of Turkish domination. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany, which led Great Britain to send troops to the Middle East. If you’ve seen David Lean’s breathtaking film “ Lawrence of Arabia,” you already know the overall arc of the narrative.
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