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TEL Encyclopedia Stephen E. Tabachnick. Lawrence of Arabia: An Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. xxxviii + 248 pp. $59.95
IT WOULD doubtless amuse Lawrence that his life has so successfully frustrated academic attention. For practical reasons, the academic world is divided up by specialist studies and departmental frontiers. To stray outside one's own field is a risky business, and those who do so can't expect much quarter if they make mistakes. In general, military historians (like military officers) leave others to study foreign policy. Greek scholars don't evaluate translation into English from French. Contemporary historians rarely attempt serious literary criticism. Archaeologists don't discuss powerboat design, and few naval architects claim to know much about cartography or fine printing.
Lawrence strayed into all these fields and more. As a result, while Churchill thought him "one of the greatest beings alive in our time" (see T. E. Lawrence by his Friends [Jonathan Cape, 1937], 202), he is an inconvenient topic for the academic world. Most students are left to get their knowledge-or, rather, misinformation-about Lawrence from David Lean's Oscar-winning film.
That is a pity because-considered as a field of study-few of Lawrence's contemporaries offer such rich rewards. For many, the film provides a first spark of interest. If the interest takes hold, it quickly becomes an adventure. Lawrence's activities and friendships open countless doors into the far larger topics that comprise British society, politics, and culture in the first half of the twentieth century.
As if that were not enough there is, as Professor Tabachnick says in...