Byzantium

San Vitale, Ravenna: The Emperor Justinian and his Court (c. 547 CE)

The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

- W. B. Yeats, "Byzantium" (1932)

Rise of Empires: Ottoman: The Fall of Constantinople (2020)

Every now and then you run across a genuinely exciting documentary series on Netflix. One such was "Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan" (2021), a dramatic and informative - albeit blood-soaked - account of the unification of Japan by various warring daimyō (or clan-lords) over the period from 1551 to 1616.

Another was "Rise of Empires: Ottoman." The first series of this Turkish docudrama told the story of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. The second - even more gripping, if somewhat gruesome - instalment of six episodes outlined the bloody conflict between Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his childhood companion Vlad the Impaler, culminating in the 1462 Ottoman invasion of Wallachia.

If you want to know who a bit more about Vlad than the fact that he was the original for Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, this is the place to go. Trigger Alert: if anything, he was even more terrifying in the flesh than in fiction ...

Steven Runciman: The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)

Steven Runciman. The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.

The other day I picked up a copy of Steven Runciman's classic account of the siege, The Fall of Constantinople. Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000), one of the strangest people ever to adorn the profession of history, specialised in the subject of the Eastern Roman empire before and after the era of the Crusades, as you'll discover if you look into the pages of his biography, Outlandish Knight:

Minoo Dinshaw: Outlandish Knight (2017)

Minoo Dinshaw. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.

His magnum opus, the three-volume History of the Crusades (1951-54), remains the most elegant and lapidary account of the period despite the seventy years that have passed since its appearance.

Steven Runciman: The History of the Crusades (3 vols: 1951-54)

Steven Runciman. A History of the Crusades. 3 vols. 1951-54. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.

• The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1951)
• The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187 (1952)
• The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (1954)

Admittedly, it has its rivals. Notably, a spirited single-volume account of the first three Crusades by the almost equally eccentric and glamorous Russian-French novelist-historian Zoë Oldenbourg.

Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)

Zoë Oldenbourg. The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.

The question remains: what is it about Byzantium? Why does it arouse such intense passions in people even now, nearly six centuries after its fall?

I suppose it might be because it still remains a bit of an unknown quantity for most readers. Rightly or wrongly, we all have some kind of mental image of the Romans and their Empire (slaves, togas, the forum, the legions, SPQR).

We also have certain select vignettes of the Ancient Greeks: Socrates and Plato arguing in the agora at Athens, swift Greek triremes defeating the Persian fleet at Salamis - even, perhaps, the last stand of the 300 at Thermopylae ...

Tell them in Sparta, passer-by
That here, obedient to their will, we lie.

- Simonides of Ceos

Or perhaps you prefer Lord Byron?

The mountains look on Marathon —
And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians’ grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

- "The Isles of Greece"

Joshua Reynolds: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.

• The Turn of the Tide (1983)
• Constantine and the Roman Empire (1984)
• The Revival and Collapse of Paganism (1985)
• The End of the Western Empire (1986)
• Justinian and the Roman Law (1987)
• Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs (1988)
• The Normans in Italy and the Crusades (1989)
• The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome (1990)

But what about Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire? It doesn't help that the most celebrated historian to have written on the subject, Edward Gibbon, had an intense prejudice against the Byzantines, and seized every possible chance to disparage them in his epic, immensely influential history of the long decline of Rome and its empire.

Nor has anything comparable been written in their defence. W. B. Yeats adored them, of course. I quoted above from his great poem "Byzantium", but there's also the earlier "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927) to consider:

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Lady Ottoline Morrell: Yeats at Garsington (1930)
[l-to-r: Walter de la Mare, Georgie Yeats, W. B. Yeats, unknown]

Yeats was, admittedly, a bit of a weirdo. He spent much of his youth studying magic with the self-appointed Magi of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, but it was the spirit messages he received at a series of séances with his newly married wife Georgie Hyde-Lees on their honeymoon which inspired him to construct a whole theory of history based on repeating cycles (or "gyres").

This led him to the conclusion that medieval Byzantium was the apex of all human cultures, and - presumably - to his (alleged) desire to spend eternity as a golden clockwork bird on a tree-branch.

These ideas also led him to write great, resonant poems, such as "The Second Coming" ("what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"). Beyond that, though, it's hard to say to what degree he actually believed in his theories, despite the immense detail devoted to the subject in his prose work A Vision (1925 / 1937).

Clara Molden: John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

John Julius Norwich. A History of Byzantium. 3 vols. 1988-1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990-1996.

• The Early Centuries (1988)
• The Apogee (1991)
• The Decline and Fall (1995)

It wasn't, in fact, until the last decades of the twentieth century that Byzantium received anything like the historical treatment it deserved. Popular historian John Julius Norwich decided to bite the bullet and try to produce a three-volume history to stand alongside Runciman's earlier work on the Crusades.

Did it redress the balance? Not really, no. Norwich is no Runciman. But he's a very accessible writer, who's written illuminating books about Venice, the Norman conquest of Sicily, and a variety of other Mediterranean events and personages. His history of Byzantium (also available in abridged form in a single volume) is a fine addition to the bibliography of the subject.

Robert Graves: Count Belisarius (1938)

Robert Graves. Count Belisarius. 1938. London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1962.

Which is, of course, immense. In fact, so many books touch on various aspects of Imperial Byzantium's thousand-year history, that it can be hard to know where to begin.

If in doubt, start off with an historical novel can be good advice on such occasions. After the immense success of I, Claudius (1934) and Claudius the God (1935), maverick English poet Robert Graves attempted to repeat the trick with a book about the great Byzantine general Belisarius (500–565).

Just as the Claudius books were largely based on the surviving writings of Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, so this new one was inspired by Procopius's History of Justinian's Wars and Secret History.

Procopius: The Secret History (1966)

Procopius. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.

• History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
• History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
• History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
• The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
• Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)

Procopius is unique among Classical historians in that as well as writing a long, tediously official history of Justinian's wars in Persia and Italy, he also left behind a scurrilous volume of scandalous gossip about the Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora - allegedly a circus performer and even prostitute before she became an Empress - the Secret History.

Graves takes full advantage of this material, and compiles a spirited yarn about the virtuous Belisarius, betrayed by his own wife Antonina as well as the corrupt Imperial couple who employed him to clean up their mistakes for so long.

Is Procopius's backstairs gossip all true? Who knows? Perhaps not the stuff about Justinian transforming into a hairy demon when he thought he was unobserved - but a lot of the rest sounds uncomfortably plausible. However, some contemporary historians have advanced a rather different reading of the Secret History:

... it has been argued that Procopius prepared the Secret History as an exaggerated document out of fear that a conspiracy might overthrow Justinian's regime, which — as a kind of court historian — might be reckoned to include him. The unpublished manuscript would then have been a kind of insurance, which could be offered to the new ruler as a way to avoid execution or exile after the coup. If this hypothesis were correct, the Secret History would not be proof that Procopius hated Justinian or Theodora.

- Wikipedia: Procopius

Speaking for myself, that sounds to me like one of those perverse hypotheses historians like dreaming up to avoid the obvious conclusions already sanctioned by other scholars - a bit like the one about how the poet Ovid just pretended to have been banished to the Black Sea by the Emperor Augustus, but instead just sat in his house at Rome and wrote poems about being in exile.

In other words, given the tone of his invective, the chances that the author of the Secret History actually admired Justinian and Theodora are about as likely - in my humble opinion - as the possibility that Q-Anon was actually right about Pizzagate, and Donald Trump really was divinely ordained to combat demon worship in Washington D.C.

John Masefield: Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora (1938)

John Masefield. Byzantine Trilogy. London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1940-47.

• Basilissa: A Tale of the Empress Theodora (1940)
• Conquer: A Tale of the Nika Rebellion in Byzantium (1941)
• Badon Parchments (1947)

Mind you, Justinian and Theodora do have their admirers. British Poet Laureate John Masefield, in his two historical novels Basilissa and Conquer, portrayed the Empress Theodora as a kind of distant cousin of Wallis Simpson - a potential breath of fresh air for a moribund court and royal family. She can do little wrong in his eyes (though Justinian does come across as a bit of a wimp).

The final volume in his trilogy (and the last novel he ever wrote), Badon Parchments, presents the story of King Arthur's victory over the Saxons at Mons Badonicus through the eyes of some official Byzantine observers, sent by the authorities of the Eastern Empire to observe, and - if possible - encourage this new manifestation of Roman fighting spirit.

William Rosen: Justinian's Flea (2006)

William Rosen. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.

A no less absorbing, and considerably more accurate picture of the Byzantine Empire at its apogee under Justinian, is given by William Rosen's account of one of the very worst outbreaks of plague ever to afflict the human race - and its possible influence on both the rise of Islam and of an independent Europe.

Isaac Asimov: Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire (1970)

Isaac Asimov. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.

However, if that sounds like a bit of a fun bypass, you could do worse than check out either SF writer Isaac Asimov's focussed and informative short history of the "Forgotten Empire", or - for a more recent view - Aussie Radio personality Richard Fidler's travel book Ghost Empire.

Fidler attempts to recount certain picturesque events from the history of Byzantium in a series of rather stilted dialogues with his young son. It's a surprisingly successful formula, and gives a good basis for further reading - just like its even more beguiling follow-up Saga Land (2017), about the wondrous world of the Icelandic Sagas.

Richard Fidler: Ghost Empire (2016)

Richard Fidler. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.

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David Talbot Rice: Byzantine Art (1968)

1. John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)
2. Zoë Oldenbourg (1916–2002)
3. Steven Runciman (1903-2000)
4. Byzantine Historians
5. History & Travel

---

Books I own are marked in bold:

John Julius Norwich (1929-2018)

John Julius Norwich
[John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich]
(1929–2018)

1. [with Reresby Sitwell] Mount Athos (1966)
2. The Normans in the South, 1016–1130 [aka 'The Other Conquest'] (1967)
   • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
3. Sahara (1968)
4. The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194 (1970)
   • Included in: The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
5. Great Architecture of the World (1975)
6. Venice: The Rise to Empire (1977)
   • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
7. Venice: The Greatness and Fall (1981)
   • Included in: A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
8. A History of Venice (1982)
   • A History of Venice. 1977 & 1981. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2003.
9. [with Suomi La Valle] Hashish (1984)
10. The Architecture of Southern England (1985)
11. Fifty Years of Glyndebourne (1985)
12. A Taste for Travel (1985)
13. Byzantium: The Early Centuries (1988)
    • Byzantium: The Early Centuries. 1988. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
14. The Normans in Sicily (1992)
    • The Normans in Sicily: The Normans in the South, 1016-1130 & The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130-1194. 1967 & 1970. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.
15. Byzantium; vol. 2: The Apogee (1992)
    • Byzantium: The Apogee. 1991. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.
16. Byzantium; vol. 3: The Decline and Fall (1995)
    • Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. 1995. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996.
17. A Short History of Byzantium (1997)
18. [with Quentin Blake] The Twelve Days of Christmas (1998)
19. Shakespeare's Kings: the Great Plays and the History of England in the Middle Ages: 1337–1485 (2000)
20. Paradise of Cities, Venice and its Nineteenth-century Visitors (2003)
    • Paradise of Cities: Nineteenth-century Venice Seen through Foreign Eyes. London: Viking, 2003.
21. The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean (2006)
    • The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean. 2006. London: Vintage Books, 2007.
22. Trying to Please [autobiography] (2008)
23. The Popes: A History [aka 'Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy'] (2011)
24. A History of England in 100 Places: From Stonehenge to the Gherkin (2012)
25. Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History (2015)
26. Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe (2016)
    • Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe. London: John Murray (Publishers), 2016.
27. France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle [aka 'A History of France'] (2018)

Edited:


28. Christmas Crackers: Being Ten Commonplace Selections 1970-1979 (1980)
29. Britain's Heritage (1983)
30. The Italian World: History, Art and the Genius of a People (1983)
31. More Christmas Crackers, 1980-1989 (1990)
32. Oxford Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Art (1990)
33. Venice: a Traveller's Companion (1990)
34. Still More Christmas Crackers, 1990-1999 (2000)
35. Treasures of Britain (2002)
36. The Duff Cooper Diaries (2006)
37. The Great Cities in History (2009)
38. The Big Bang: Christmas Crackers, 2000–2009 (2010)
39. Darling Monster: The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich (2013)
40. [with Quentin Blake] The Illustrated Christmas Cracker (2013)
41. Cities That Shaped the Ancient World (2014)
42. A Christmas Cracker: being a Commonplace Selection (2018)

•

Zoë Oldenbourg

Zoë Oldenbourg
[Зоя Сергеевна Ольденбург]
(1916–2002)

Fiction:


1. Argile et cendres (1946)
   • The World is Not Enough. 1946. Trans. Willard A. Trask. 1948. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
2. La Pierre angulaire (1953)
   • The Cornerstone. 1953. Trans. Edward Hyams. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1954.
3. Réveillés de la vie (1956)
   • The Awakened. Trans. Edward Hyams (1957)
4. Les Irréductibles (1958)
   • The Chains of Love. 1958. Trans. Michael Bullock. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1959.
5. Les Brûlés (1960)
   • Destiny of Fire. 1960. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
6. Les Cités charnelles, ou L'Histoire de Roger de Montbrun (1961)
   • Cities of the Flesh, or The Story of Roger de Montbrun. Trans. Anne Carter (1962)
7. La Joie des pauvres (1970)
   • The Heirs of the Kingdom. 1970. Trans. Anne Carter. 1971. Fontana Books. London: Wm. Collins., 1974.
8. La Joie-souffrance (1980)
9. Le Procès du rêve (1982)
10. Les Amours égarées (1987)
11. Déguisements [short stories] (1989)

Non-fiction:


12. Le Bûcher de Montségur, 16 mars 1244 (1959)
    • Massacre at Montségur: A History of the Albigensian Crusade. 1959. Trans. Peter Green. 1961. Phoenix Giant. London: Orion Books Ltd., 1998.
13. Les Croisades (1965)
    • The Crusades. 1965. Trans. Anne Carter. Pantheon Books. New York: Random House, Inc., 1966.
14. Catherine de Russie (1966)
    • Catherine the Great. 1966. Trans. Anne Carter. Preface by Arthur Calder-Marshall. Women Who Made History. Geneva: Heron Books, 1968.
15. Saint Bernard (1970)
16. L'Épopée des cathédrales (1972)
17. Que vous a donc fait Israël ? (1974)
18. Visages d'un autoportrait (1977)
19. Que nous est Hécube ?, ou Un plaidoyer pour l'humain (1984)

Plays:


20. L'Évêque et la vieille dame, ou La Belle-mère de Peytavi Borsier, pièce en dix tableaux et un prologue (1983)
21. Aliénor, pièce en quatre tableaux (1992)

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Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000)

Steven Runciman
[Sir James Cochran Stevenson Runciman]
(1903-2000)

1. The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign: A Study of Tenth-Century Byzantium (1929)
2. A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (1930)
3. Byzantine Civilization (1933)
4. The Medieval Manichee: A Study of the Christian Dualist Heresy (1947)
5. A History of the Crusades, Volume One (1951)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 1: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1951. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
6. A History of the Crusades, Volume Two (1952)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 2: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187. 1952. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
7. A History of the Crusades, Volume Three (1954)
   • A History of the Crusades. Vol. 3: The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. 1954. Peregrine Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
8. The Eastern Schism (1955)
   • The Eastern Schism: a Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the 11th and 12th Centuries. 1955. Panther History. London: Panther, 1970.
9. The Sicilian Vespers (1958)
   • The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century. 1958. A Pelican Book. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.
10. The White Rajahs: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946 (1960)
11. The Fall of Constantinople 1453 (1965)
    • The Fall of Constantinople 1453. 1965. Cambridge University Press. London: Readers Union Ltd., 1966.
12. The Great Church in Captivity: A Study of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the Eve of the Turkish Conquest to the Greek War of Independence (1968)
13. The Last Byzantine Renaissance (1970)
14. Orthodox Churches and the Secular State (1971)
15. Byzantine Style and Civilization (1975)
16. The Byzantine Theocracy: The Weil Lectures, Cincinnati (1977)
17. Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (1980)
18. The First Crusade (1980)
19. A Traveller's Alphabet: Partial Memoirs (1991) ISBN 9780500015049

Secondary:


20. Dinshaw, Minoo. Outlandish Knight: The Byzantine Life of Steven Runciman. 2016. Penguin Books. London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017.

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Anna Komnene (1083-1153 CE)

Byzantine Historians

Anna Komnēnē [Comnena] (1083–1153)


1. The Alexiad. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.

Procopius of Caesarea (c.500–c.565)


2. Works. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 7 vols. 1914-1940. Loeb Classics. London: William Heinemann / Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978 & 1979.
   1. History of the Wars, Books I & II. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1914 (1979)
   2. History of the Wars, Books III & IV. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1916 (1979)
   3. History of the Wars, Books V & VI. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1919 (1968)
   4. History of the Wars, Books VI.16-VII.35. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1924 (1979)
   5. History of the Wars, Books VII.36-VIII. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1928 (1978)
   6. The Anecdota or Secret History. Trans. H. B. Dewing. 1935 (1969)
   7. Buildings / General Index to Procopius. Trans. H. B. Dewing, with Glanville Downey. 1940 (1971)
3. The Secret History. Trans. G. A. Williamson. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
4. The Secret History. c.550 CE. Trans. G. A. Williamson. 1966. Introduction by Philip Ziegler. London: The Folio Society, 1990.

Michael Psellos / Psellus (c.1017/18-c.1078)


5. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers: The Chronographia of Michael Psellus. Trans. E. R. A. Sewter. 1953. Penguin Classics. 1966. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979.

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The Sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders (1204)

History & Travel

1. Asimov, Isaac. Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1970.
2. Burckhardt, Jacob. The Age of Constantine the Great. 1852. Rev. ed. 1880. Trans. Moses Hadas. 1949. A Vintage Book V-393. New York: Random House, 1967.
3. Byron, Robert. The Station. Athos: Treasures and Men. 1928. Introduction by Christopher Sykes. A Phoenix Press Paperback. London: The Orion Publishing Group Ltd., 2000.
4. Byron, Robert. The Road to Oxiana. 1937. Introduction by Bruce Chatwin. London: Picador, 1981.
5. Dalrymple, William. From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium. 1997. Flamingo. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
6. Fidler, Richard. Ghost Empire. 2016. ABC Books. Sydney: HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty Ltd., 2017.
7. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. 1776-88; 1910. Ed. Betty Radice & Felipé Fernández-Armesto. 8 vols. London: Folio Society, 1983-90.
   1. The Turn of the Tide. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1983)
   2. Constantine and the Roman Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1984)
   3. The Revival and Collapse of Paganism. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1985)
   4. The End of the Western Empire. Ed. & with an introduction by Betty Radice (1986)
   5. Justinian and the Roman Law. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1987)
   6. Mohammed and the Rise of the Arabs. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1988)
   7. The Normans in Italy and the Crusades. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1989)
   8. The Fall of Constantinople and the Papacy in Rome. Ed. & with an introduction by Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1990)
8. Hodgkin, Thomas. The Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. ['Italy and her Invaders,' 1880-1899]. Introduced by Peter Heather. 8 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2000-3.
   1. The Visigothic Invasion. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
   2. The Huns and the Vandals. 1880. rev. ed. 1892 (2000)
   3. The Ostrogoths, 476-535. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
   4. The Imperial Restoration, 535-553. 1885. rev. ed. 1896 (2001)
   5. The Lombard Invasion, 553-600. 1895 (2002)
   6. The Lombard Kingdom, 600-744. 1895 (2002)
   7. The Frankish Invasion, 744-774. 1899 (2003)
   8. The Frankish Empire. 1899 (2003)
9. Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Wars Between Christianity and Islam. 1989. Godalming, Surrey: CLB International, 1997.
10. Hill, Rosalind, ed. Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum. Nelson’s Medieval Texts. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1962.
11. Joinville & Villehardouin. Chronicles of the Crusades: The Conquest of Constantinople / The Life of Saint Louis. Trans. M. R. B. Shaw. 1963. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.
12. Rice, David Talbot. Byzantine Art. 1935. A Pelican Book. 1954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968.
13. Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and The Birth of Europe. 2006. London: Pimlico, 2008.
14. Wilmot-Buxton, E. M. The Story of the Crusades. 1910. Told Through the Ages. 1912. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1927.

San Vitale, Ravenna: The Empress Theodora (c.540s CE)

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Merry Tales of Skelton

Skelton Poeta

For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth.

I think I first encountered John Skelton via a side-reference in Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930), his fictionalised account of life on the Western Front in the First World War. Sassoon describes his fellow-officer 'David Cromlech' [= Robert Graves] as follows:

He made short work of most books which I had hitherto venerated, for David was a person who consumed his enthusiasms quickly, and he once fairly took my breath away by pooh-poohing Paradise Lost as ‘that moribund academic concoction’. I hadn’t realized that it was possible to speak disrespectfully about Milton. Anyhow, John Milton was consigned to perdition, and John Skelton was put forward as ‘one of the few really good poets.’ But somehow I could never quite accept his supremacy over Milton as an established fact.

John Skelton? Who he? My passionate interest in any and everything to do with Robert Graves soon led me to the latter's early poem "John Skelton", included in the wartime collection Fairies and Fusiliers (1917) but not reprinted in any of the various editions of his Collected Poems:

... angrily, wittily,
Tenderly, prettily,
Laughingly, learnedly,
Sadly, madly,
Helter-skelter John
Rhymes serenely on,
As English poets should.
Old John, you do me good!

I was therefore immensely excited to find an old edition of the Shakespearean scholar Alexander Dyce's 19th century edition of Skelton in a second-hand shop sometime in the 1970s. Unfortunately, it was only the first of two volumes, but it contained all the text - though without any of Dyce's detailed explanatory notes.

Alexander Dyce, ed. The Poetical Works of John Skelton (1843)

But who was this man John Skelton, anyway?

Probably his principal claim to fame in the eyes of posterity is the fact that he acted as Henry VIII's tutor in the late 1490s, and wrote a book of advice (now lost) for the young prince in the genre generally classified as Speculum Principis [Mirror for Princes].

He was immensely proud of having been crowned as a "laureate" at Oxford university, and subsequently at Cambridge, then Leuven in Flanders. The term didn't mean then what it does now, though. It signified high attainment in rhetoric, rather than official appointment as a court poet.

Even so, Skelton wrote an outrageously exaggerated poem called The Garland of Laurel to celebrate this event, deliberately blurring its significance in order to milk the maximum mileage out of the distinction. He also signed himself 'Skelton, Laureat' ever afterwards.

After a brief period of imprisonment for unknown reasons in the early 1500s, Skelton retired from regular attendance at court, composing another long poem entitled The Bowge of Court to satirise the terrible corruption and greed he found there under the (so-called) Accountant King, Henry VII.

Instead, he took up the role of rector of Diss in Norfolk, where he is said to have caused a good deal of scandal with his unorthodox behaviour and views:

his parishioners ... thought him more fit for the stage than the pew or the pulpit. He was secretly married to a woman who lived in his house, and earned the hatred of the Dominican friars by his fierce satire. He consequently came under the formal censure of Richard Nix, the bishop of the diocese, and appears to have been temporarily suspended. After his death a collection of farcical tales, no doubt chiefly, if not entirely, apocryphal, gathered round his name — The Merie Tales of Skelton.

- Wikipedia: John Skelton

William Hazlitt, ed. Merie Tales of Skelton (1856)

One of the most valuable features of Dyce's edition of Skelton is the inclusion, in an appendix, of the entire text of this ridiculous book of fifteenth-century 'humour'. Most of the gags tend to hinge on someone being beaten within an inch of their lives, or otherwise bested by the arch-joker Skelton. The extract below will give you some idea of the kind of thing it is:

Merie Tales of Skelton (1567)

So what was it that Graves, and others, saw in this rather absurd sounding figure? Well, for a start, between the death of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400 and the introduction of Italianate verse forms such as the sonnet into England in the 1530s and 40s by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, there isn't really a lot to celebrate in English poetry.

Most of the serious action was taking place north of the border in Scotland, where poets such as Gavin Douglas, William Dunbar, and Robert Henryson were continuing - and extending - the tradition of Chaucerian narrative verse.

The Battle of Flodden (1513)

And what did England have to offer in response? Well, there's Skelton's poem 'Against the Scots,' his sensitive account of the tragic Battle of Flodden:

Lo, these fond sots
And trattling Scots,
How they are blind
In their own mind,
And will not know
Their overthrow
At Brankston Moor!
They are so stour,
So frantic mad,
They say they had
And won the field
With spear and shield:
That is as true
As black is blue
And green is grey.
Whatever they say,
Jemmy is dead
And closed in lead,
That was their own king:
Fie on that winning!

It puts one rather in mind of Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade', doesn't it?

Mary Boleyn

That's probably the least attractive aspect of Skelton. He did have a gift for lyric verse, though, witness the portraits of court ladies included in his Garland of Laurel:

Merry Margaret,
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as a falcon
Or hawk of the tower:
With solace and gladness,
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness;
So joyously,
So maidenly,
So womanly
Her demeaning
In every thing,
Far, far passing
That I can indite,
Or suffice to write
Of Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon
Or hawk of the tower.
As patient and still
And as full of good will
As fair Isaphill,
Coriander,
Sweet pomander,
Good Cassander,
Steadfast of thought,
Well made, well wrought,
Far may be sought
Ere that ye can find
So courteous, so kind
As Merry Margaret,
This midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon
Or hawk of the tower.

You can certainly see his influence not just on Robert Graves, but also on other early twentieth-century poets such as Edith Sitwell and W. H. Auden.

Here's the former's 'Aubade', included in some versions of her 'instrumental entertainment' Façade (1923):

Roger Fry: Edith Sitwell in 1912 (1918)

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak mind . . .

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

And here's the latter's 1930 poem 'This Lunar Beauty':

This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early,
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this,
For time is inches
And the heart's changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost's endeavor
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease,
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

John Scattergood: John Skelton: The Career of an Early Tudor Poet (2014)

So how to sum up the longterm influence of John Skelton? The lack of a readily available modern edition of his poems - or the ones in English, at any rate - was addressed, first, by Philip Henderson's frequently reprinted Dent edition of 1931.

Some of the textual deficiencies in Henderson's version have now been corrected by Skelton-biographer John Scattergood's Complete English Poems (1983) in the Penguin English Poets series.

Is he worth reading? A lot of his work is, admittedly, probably only of interest to medievalists and literary scholars, but there's a good deal of vivid satire and storytelling there which does go some way towards justifying Robert Graves' favourable verdict.

For the rest, I should probably leave you with probably the most celebrated of those 'Merie Tales of Skelton' which at least did something to carry his name down to posterity:

Tale vii:
How Skelton, when he came from the bishop, made a sermon.

Skelton the next Sunday after went into the pulpit to preach, and said, "Vos estis, vos estis, that is to say, You be, you be. And what be you?" said Skelton: "I say, that you be a sort of knaves, yea, and a man might say worse than knaves; and why, I shall show you. You have complained of me to the bishop that I do keep a fair wench in my house: I do tell you, if you had any fair wives, it were some what to help me at need; I am a man as you be: you have foul wives, and I have a fair wench, of the which I have begotten a fair boy, as I do think, and as you all shall see. Thou wife," said Skelton, "that hast my child, be not afraid; bring me hither my child to me:" the which was done. And he, showing his child naked to all the parish, said, "How say you, neighbours all? is not this child as fair as is the best of all yours? It hath nose, eyes, hands, and feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a pig, nor a calf, nor like no fowl nor no monstrous beast. If I had," said Skelton, "brought forth this child without arms or legs, or that it were deformed, being a monstrous thing, I would never have blamed you to have complained to the bishop of me; but to complain without a cause, I say, as I said before in my antetheme, vos estis, you be, and have be, and will and shall be knaves, to complain of me without a cause reasonable. For you be presumptuous, and do exalt yourselves, and therefore you shall be made low: as I shall show you a familiar example of a parish priest, the which did make a sermon in Rome. And he did take that for his antetheme, the which of late days is named a theme, and said, Qui se exaltat humiliabitur, et qui see humiliat exaltabitur, that is to say, he that doth exalt himself or doth extol himself shall be made meek, and he that doth humble himself or is meek, shall be exalted, extolled, or elevated, or sublimated, or such like; and that I will show you by this my cap. This cap was first my hood, when that I was student in Jucalico, and then it was so proud that it would not be contented, but it would slip and fall from my shoulders. I perceiving this that he was proud, what then did I? shortly to conclude, I did make of him a pair of breeches to my hose, to bring him low. And when that I did see, know, or perceive that he was in that case, and allmost worn clean out, what did I then to extol him up again? you all may see that this my cap was made of it that was my breeches. Therefore, said Skelton, vos estis, therefore you be, as I did say before: if that you exalt yourself, and cannot be contented that I have my wench still, some of you shall wear horns; and therefore vos estis: and so farewell." It is merry in the hall, when beards wag all.

So there you go. It is indeed merry in the hall, when beards wag all.

•

John Skelton

John Skelton
(c.1460–1529)

1. The Poetical Works of Skelton and Donne with a Memoir of Each. Ed. Alexander Dyce. 1843. 4 Vols in 2. Riverside Edition. 1855. Cambridge: The Riverside Press / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1881.



The Poetical Works of Skelton and Donne. 4 vols in 2 (1855)



2. Skelton, John. The Complete Poems of John Skelton, Laureate: 1460-1529. Ed. Philip Henderson. 1931. Everyman’s Library. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1966.



The Complete Poems of John Skelton (1931)



3. Skelton, John. The Complete English Poems. Ed. John Scattergood. Penguin English Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.



John Skelton: The Complete English Poems (1983)



4. Pollet, Maurice. John Skelton: Poet of Tudor England. 1962. Trans. John Warrington. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1970.

Maurice Pollet: John Skelton: Poet of Tudor England (1962 / 1971)

•

The Tribulations of T. E. Lawrence

Augustus John: Colonel T.E. Lawrence (1919)

i. m. Jeremy Michael Wilson (1944–2017)

As a kind of add-on to my series of posts about the Garnett family (and, for that matter, as an adjunct to my fascination with polymath poet Robert Graves), I thought I'd write a piece about their mutual friend T. E. Lawrence: a devotee of small-press publishing, and, consequently, something of an idol to book-collectors everywhere.

The portrait above supplies the heroic image of Lawrence we're most familiar with: at the height of his fame, the world at his feet, and his image as the quintessential "desert-mad Englishman" on display front-and-centre in the Paris Peace Conference at the end of World War I.

Lawrence himself appears to have preferred the rather more equivocal and self-doubting version of himself presented in this preliminary sketch by Augustus John:

Augustus John: T.E. Lawrence (1919)

In a strange sense, though, his role had already been prepared for him even before the Allied propaganda machine began to focus on him in 1917 - when there was precious little good news anywhere else in the world.

His exploits as a kind of Arabic version of Zorro or the Swamp Fox were vamped up mercilessly by pioneering American film-maker Lowell Thomas after their meeting in Jerusalem in 1918, culminating in his travelling show "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" (1919).

Lowell Thomas & T. E. Lawrence (1924)

But even before that, in 1916, Jingoistic author John Buchan had created a kind of Lawrence avatar in the form of "Sandy Arbuthnot," one of the protagonists of his novel Greenmantle, an exciting tale of a religious revolt against the Turks and their German allies, led by the eponymous prophet "Greenmantle," eventually impersonated by Sandy himself.

John Buchan: Greenmantle (1916)

Greatly though Buchan subsequently came to admire Lawrence - "I am not much of a hero-worshipper, but I could have followed Lawrence over the edge of the world" - it's not really possible that he could have known enough about him at this stage to base his hero on him.

Instead, it's thought that the model for Sandy Arbuthnot was his friend Aubrey Herbert, the half-brother of Lord Carnarvon (of Tutankhamun fame), and a colleague of Lawrence's in the intelligence war in the Middle East.

Effigy of Colonel The Honourable Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert DL (1880–1923)

•

So much for the foundations of the myth. Wherever it came from, and whatever its ingredients, it grew far beyond any expectations of wartime propaganda. Nor was this hindered by the immensely complex way in which Lawrence backed his war reminiscences into print. The story is best told by Jeremy Wilson, his authorised biographer:

In 1922 T. E. Lawrence finished work on the third draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The first, written during 1919, had been incomplete when it was stolen from him at Reading station. The second had been a hurried re-write, dashed-off from memory. Using this as a basis, Lawrence worked for many months on a third version, which he corrected and polished. There were probably intermediate drafts of most chapters, because what finally emerged was a fair-copy manuscript. This, the earliest surviving complete text, is nearly 84,000 words longer than the version he later issued to subscribers.

This theft of the original, 1919 version has gone into folklore. Many have dreamed of locating that first, scrawled manuscript of what would become an immensely controversial book. What extra secrets did it contain? What indiscretions led to its being stolen - by the British secret service, perhaps? Or was it, as Lawrence himself intimated, simply mislaid?

The new, 1922 draft was printed and bound up in eight copies, which were distributed to a number of influential literary friends: E. M. Forster, Edward Garnett, Robert Graves and George Bernard Shaw among them. As Wilson rather coyly remarks: "It was this 1922 text which convinced readers that Lawrence had written a masterpiece." There was immense interest from publishers, and Edward Garnett offered to make an abridgement if its author still had misgivings about issuing the full text.

On 16 August 1922 Lawrence enlisted in the RAF under the pseudonym of "J. H. Ross." This attempted act of self-abnegation was, however, stymied by press attention, and he was forced to resign in January 1923. A couple of months later, a certain "T. E. Shaw" enlisted as a private in the Tank Corps, which was far less congenial to him. He was able to negotiate a transfer back to the RAF in 1925, however.

Through all these shenanigans, one of the few things keeping him afloat was his work on revising and tightening the text of this (so-called) 'Oxford' version of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which eventually resulted in the very expensive, full illustrated subscriber's edition of 100 copies in 1926.

T. E. Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (subscribers edition) (1926)

Lawrence was careful to receive no profit from this publication. The production costs (especially the reproduction of the illustrations) were so high that he actually ended up in deficit. He did, however, allow Jonathan Cape to issue a shorter version, Revolt in the Desert, abridged by Edward Garnett, in 1927.

T. E. Lawrence: Revolt in the Desert (1927)

After Lawrence's death in 1935, his brother A. W. Lawrence, who had been named as his literary executor, decided to reprint the subscriber's edition for the general public. The rest is history. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom has probably never been out of print since. The longer 1922 version was not, however, reprinted until 1997.

T. E. Lawrence: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (trade edition) (1935)

As far as the differences between the two texts go, Robert Graves, who published a popular biography of Lawrence in 1927, gave his views as follows:

There is such a thing as a book being too well written, too much a part of literature ... It should somehow, one feels, have been a little more casual, for the nervous strain of its ideal of faultlessness is almost oppressive ... On the whole I prefer the earliest surviving version, the so-called Oxford text, to the final printed text.

Lawrence laughed this off as proof that Graves wanted to assert his superior knowledge by revealing in this offhand way that he'd actually been allowed to see the earlier version. It must have rankled, though (as did Leonard Woolf's comment, in a review of Revolt in the Desert, that "every sentence begins again with a full breath and ends with a really full stop"). A few years later he asked E. M. Forster to read and compare the two texts. Forster's judgement was, when it came, just as equivocal:

I had to admit that the sentences in the revision were more concise and showed a superior sense for the functions, and incidentally for the etymology, of the words employed in them. But the relation between the sentences seemed to me a little impaired: the connection, though logical, wasn't always easy.

Later, after Lawrence's death, when the question of which version to reprint arose, Forster responded more straightforwardly:

the Oxford is in the judgment of several critics even superior to the version offered now, and it is good news that a reprint of it may eventually be made.

That didn't happen in A. W. Lawrence's lifetime (he died in 1991), but when, a few years later, the 1922 text was finally published, the comparison could finally be made by anyone - not simply a few privileged scholars and friends.

T. E. Lawrence: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (2014)

•

Does it matter? Not as much as you'd think, I'm sorry to say. Lawrence's legend has always shone brighter in the writings of others than in his own work. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, I think most of us who've actually read it can attest, is overwritten and difficult to follow. Not so his letters, which are clear, informal and fascinating. But it's as a character - the star of a series of warring biographies, as well as conflicting betrayals on stage and screen - that he's come down to us most vividly.

Michael Goldberg, dir.: The Ascent of F6 (Northern Illinois University)

This began early, in masked form, in W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood's play The Ascent of F6 (1936). The latter's autobiography Christopher and His Kind (1976) lays out the dichotomy the two had evolved between the 'truly strong' and the 'truly weak' man:

The truly strong man, calm, balanced, aware of his strength, sits drinking quietly in the bar; it is not necessary for him to try and prove to himself that he is not afraid, by joining the Foreign Legion ... leaving his comfortable home in a snowstorm to climb the impossible glacier ... [192]

"From Christopher and Wystan's point of view, the Truly Weak Man was represented by Lawrence of Arabia, and hence by their character Michael Ransom in F.6."

This was, however, during the period when the Lord Chancellor still had to licence all new plays in Britain, and amongst his prerogatives was preventing the portrayal of public figures on stage in any but flattering guises. This power weakened over the years, and even before the abolition of state censorship of theatre in 1968, a number of attempts had been made to subvert this principle.

Terence Rattigan: Alec Guinness as Lawrence/Ross (1960)

Among these was Ross - a play by immensely popular dramatist Terence Rattigan (author of The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and French without Tears).

The play concerns blackmail. It's based on a rumour Rattigan (himself a very closeted homosexual) had heard that a man called Dickinson had threatened to "out" Lawrence while he was hiding under a pseudonym in the RAF. Alec Guinness played Lawrence, and - it is alleged - made the homosexual undertones of the play more apparent in performance than in the published text. Wikipedia adds that:

Ross was originally written as a film script for the Rank Organization, with Dirk Bogarde cast as Lawrence. The project fell through due to a combination of financial difficulties and political turmoil in Iraq, where it was to be filmed. A later attempt to adapt the play, with Laurence Harvey as Lawrence, was scrapped when David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia went into production.

David Lean / Robert Bolt: Peter O'Toole as Lawrence (1962)

Which is where we re-enter history. Who has not seen, and marvelled at, Lawrence of Arabia? It must be one of the single most influential films of modern times. The sweep of it, the epic scope, the cinematography - on and on we rave.

A. W. Lawrence hated it. And it did have the effect of eclipsing the private, scholarly Lawrence he'd been quietly constructing off on his own all those years, and turning his brother into a preening egomaniac, a poseur, a victim - anything but the scholar and gentleman he was (or at least may much of the time have wanted to be).

Christopher Menaul / Tim Rose Price: Ralph Fiennes as T. E. Lawrence (1992)

There've been other attempts to resurrect Lawrence since. One of the most creditable is recorded above. But it's rather like trying to rewrite Hamlet. It can be done, of course, but the mould has really been set once and for all. Robert Bolt, David Lean, Peter O'Toole and T. E. Lawrence can never now be seen entirely separately again.

But that's not to say that the battle of the books didn't continue. One thing about writers is that they never allow somebody else the last word. The saga of Lawrence's biographers is perhaps even more interesting - and certainly more complex and involved - that that of his dramatic incarnations.

•


Lowell Thomas: With Lawrence in Arabia (1924)

Robert Graves: Lawrence and the Arabs (1927)

Basil Liddell Hart: 'T. E. Lawrence': In Arabia and After (1934)

It began - after the Lowell Thomas farrago - with subtly modulated hagiography, under the close supervision of (first) Lawrence himself, and then his beloved brother. First Robert Graves, then Basil Liddell Hart, and finally A. W. Lawrence himself had a go at constructing a suitable memorial frieze:

A. W. Lawrence, ed.: T. E. Lawrence by His Friends (1937)

T. E. Lawrence to his Biographer: Robert Graves (1938)

T. E. Lawrence to his Biographer: Liddell Hart (1938)

As you can see from the above, Lawrence was not exactly bashful about supplying his biographers with answers to faqs. But you can't really keep a lid on things forever, however assiduous a literary executor you are.

In 1955 war poet and novelist (and ex-husband of American poet H. D.) Richard Aldington published possibly the most concerted attack on Lawrence and the Lawrence myth ever penned.

Richard Aldington: Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry (1955)

I think the true nature of Aldington's work only struck me when I read a passage where he quotes someone's anecdote about how the Lawrence boys used to cycle to school in single file, one after the other, in order of age. "I don't know what this proves," quips Aldington, "except that a talent for posing manifested in him at an early age."

And so he continues. Oceans of bile are poured over poor Lawrence's head, and the gripes and dissatisfactions of a lifetime (Aldington's) are all attributed to him. This is not to say that the Lawrence legend didn't deserve some debunking, but one can't quite feel that Aldington had the temperament to do a really effective job.

A rather better attempt was made John Mack in his wonderfully titled (and Pulitzer prize-winning) psychological biography A Prince of Our Disorder:

John E. Mack: A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence (1976)

Just what was wrong with Lawrence? Why did he behave so strangely? Why did he pay a man to come and beat him in his later years in London? Was he a sado-masochist? Was he gay? Was he impotent? Few stones are left unturned in the course of the questioning.

After which, I suppose, a few people thought the poor fellow might be left to lie in his grave undisturbed for a while. It was not to be. The final tombstone of an 'authorised biography' still awaited him:

Jeremy Wilson: Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1989)

Opinions on Jeremy Wilson's magnum opus differ greatly. It was selected by The New York Times as one of the six best nonfiction books of 1990, while the Toronto Star described it as "an unremarkable book." It all depends on what you're looking for, I suppose.

For myself, I found that it answered almost all of the nagging questions I had about Lawrence: and that its depth and weight of research did have the effect of wiping other, competing attempts at biography (including, I'm afraid, Mack's) out of the field.

Was Lawrence a pathological liar, who shifted and invented things in his own account of his wartime exploits? The apparent inconsistencies in his text had led earlier commentators to assume so, but Wilson makes a surprisingly strong case for the proposition that Lawrence was actually remarkably accurate and truthful: not only about impressions, but also about the recorded facts of events.

Again and again "errors" in Lawrence's book turn out to be backed up by contemporary documents. Before Wilson, it seems that nobody really bothered to check. The website for Wilson's private press Castle Hill Books reveals just how much he's gone on to do for Lawrence's posthumous reputation. This includes a massive, multi-volumed edition of Lawrence's surviving correspondence, and - perhaps most importantly of all - the republication of the 1922 text of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

I can't help feeling that many of the sneers (or yawns) that have been directed at his great biography of his hero come either from people who haven't read it, or - even more likely - haven't read any of its forest of predecessors. If you really want to know the facts about T. E. Lawrence, admittedly from a very favourable viewpoint, there's really no alternative to reading Wilson: the full 1989 text, mind you, not the 1992 abridgement.

Here's a list of the Lawrence-iana in my own collection. As you'll see, it's quite extensive, but by no means complete. For a man who published so little in his own lifetime, Lawrence casts a surprisingly long shadow for subsequent bibliographers:

•


T. E. Lawrence at Miranshah (1928)

Thomas Edward Lawrence
(1888-1935)

T. E. Lawrence: Works (1910-35)


Works:


1. Lawrence, T. E. Crusader Castles. 1910. Ed. A. W. Lawrence. 1936. Introduction by Mark Bostridge. London: The Folio Society, 2010.


2. Lawrence, T. E. The Complete 1922 Seven Pillars of Wisdom: The 'Oxford' Text. 1922. Ed. Jeremy Michael Wilson. 1997. 2nd ed. 2003-4. 3rd. ed. 2 vols. Salisbury, England: Castle Hill Press, 2014.


3. Lawrence, T. E. Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. 1926. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1946.


4. Lawrence, T. E. Revolt in the Desert. New York: Garden City Publishing Company Inc., 1927.


5. Lawrence, T. E. The Mint: The Complete Unexpurgated Text. Ed. A. W. Lawrence. 1936. Preface by J. M. Wilson. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.


6. Lawrence, T. E. Oriental Assembly. With Photographs by the Author. Ed. A. W. Lawrence. 1939. London: Williams and Norgate Ltd., 1939.


7. Garnett, David, ed. The Essential T. E. Lawrence. 1951. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956.


8. Garnett, David, ed. The Essential T. E. Lawrence: A Selection of His Finest Writings. 1951. Introduction by Malcolm Brown. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Edited:


9. Lawrence, T. E., ed. Minorities. Ed. J. M. Wilson. Preface by C. Day Lewis. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.




T. E. Shaw: The Odyssey (1932)


Translations:


10. Shaw, T. E. (Colonel T. E. Lawrence), trans. The Odyssey of Homer: Translated into English Prose. 1932. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.




T. E. Lawrence: Letters (c.1900-35)


Letters:


11. Garnett, David, ed. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1938.


12. Lawrence, M. R., ed. The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence and His Brothers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954.


13. Lawrence, A. W., ed. Letters to T. E. Lawrence. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1962.




T. E. Lawrence: Biographies (1924-89)


Secondary:


14. Thomas, Lowell. With Lawrence in Arabia. London: Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), Ltd., 1924.


15. Graves, Robert. Lawrence and the Arabs. Illustrations ed. Eric Kennington. Maps by Herry Perry. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1927.


16. Liddell Hart, B. H. ‘T. E. Lawrence’: In Arabia and After. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1934.


17. Lawrence, A. W., ed. T. E. Lawrence by His Friends. 1937. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1938.


18. Aldington, Richard. Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Enquiry. London: Collins, 1955.


19. Mack, John E. A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence. 1976. New Preface by the Author. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998.


20. Wilson, Jeremy. Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorised Biography of T. E. Lawrence. 1989. Minerva. London: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1990.




Howard Brenton: Lawrence after Arabia (2016)


Dramatic versions:


21. Plays of the Sixties. Volume One: Ross, by Terence Rattigan; The Royal Hunt of the Sun, by Peter Shaffer; Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse & Willis Hall; Play with a Tiger, by Doris Lessing. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1966.


22. Lawrence Of Arabia, dir. David Lean, writ. Robert Bolt – with Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle – (USA, 1962)


23. Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography. Research Associate: Cy Young. 1996. A Wyatt Book. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.

T. E. Lawrence with Emir Abdullah (1921)