Books, Arts & Manners: Garbo of Arabia Revisited

A Biography: T. E. Lawrence, by Michael Yardley (Stein & Day, 267 pp„ $22.95)

Some 11 years ago, this reviewer paid qualified tribute to John Mack’s bloated but meticulously researched A Prince of Our Disorder, and murmured a fervent prayer that God would spare us further biographies of one of the most over-publicized poseurs of modern times, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, whom, perhaps a bit ungenerously, I dubbed “Garbo of Arabia.” In retrospect, it was a foolish prayer, doomed to go unanswered. The Lawrence Legend lives, thanks largely to the crafty egomania of Lawrence himself, and to the seemingly inexhaustible public appetite for romantic heroes in a distinctly unromantic age.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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A Biography: T. E. Lawrence, by Michael Yardley (Stein & Day, 267 pp„ $22.95)

Some 11 years ago, this reviewer paid qualified tribute to John Mack’s bloated but meticulously researched A Prince of Our Disorder, and murmured a fervent prayer that God would spare us further biographies of one of the most over-publicized poseurs of modern times, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, whom, perhaps a bit ungenerously, I dubbed “Garbo of Arabia.” In retrospect, it was a foolish prayer, doomed to go unanswered. The Lawrence Legend lives, thanks largely to the crafty egomania of Lawrence himself, and to the seemingly inexhaustible public appetite for romantic heroes in a distinctly unromantic age.