I normally reside in the Research Centre, working with Mal and Robyn, but for the past five months I have been working in the Memorial’s Military Heraldry and Technology section (MHT). MHT’s collection includes uniforms, medals, souvenirs, trench art, weaponry, vehicles and other interesting items. Some items from the MHT collection have been selected for display in Lawrence exhibition. Of the items selected, my favourites are the beadwork items made by Ottoman Prisoners of War in British POW camps.

Ottoman prisoners made many items whilst in captivity. It kept them occupied and was an avenue for them to earn money to supplement their rations and purchase items they required. Some prisoners even sent them home as gifts for family members or used them to barter with other prisoners. read on

Jeremy Wilson will be coming out to Canberra for the opening of our exhibition, with support from the British High Commission in Canberra. He will give a public talk in our Telstra Theatre on Sunday, 9 December 2007. Jeremy who wrote Lawrence of Arabia – the Authorised Biography (1989) is recognised as the world’s leading scholar on Lawrence. He also wrote the catalogue for the 1988 National Portrait Gallery exhibition in London which marked the centenary of Lawrence’s birth. The catalogue has proved extremely useful for our own research into Lawrence.

Jeremy’s lecture will focus on Lawrence’s role in the capture of Akaba on 6 July 1917. Akaba became an important Red Sea base from which Lawrence and the Arab Revolt were able to launch attacks against the northern sections of the Hejaz Railway. Jeremy believes that Lawrence had a hand in the use of aerial photography to produce this map of Akaba that he identified in the Memorial’s collection. More details will follow closer to the event.

Mal

I’ve just put up Matthew Gibbs’ review of the film Lawrence of Arabia against our call for reviews. You can find it here and it is well worth a read. Matthew is a freelance writer from Sydney with a good knowledge of Lawrence.

While I’m here, did anyone else catch the appearance by Lawrence in the SBS TV show As It Happened about Churchill’s bodyguard on Friday night (23 February 2007)? The bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson, was amazed by Lawrence’s reputation and influence with the Arabs in Palestine in 1921.

Churchill and Lawrence enjoyed a long working relationship after Churchill persuaded Lawrence to work as an adviser in the Colonial Office when he was Colonial Secretary. For our exhibition, we will be bringing out from The (UK) National Archives, some original correspondence between Churchill and Lawrence that illustrates the bond between the two men and Churchill’s respect for Lawrence’s advice regarding Middle East matters over this period in 1921.

Mal

I am sorry that there have been few posts recently. It isn’t because we have all been on holiday. This time of year is simply a very busy period for all of us, with many planning and budget deadlines to meet. As well, we are now finalising details for the last couple of loans needed for the Lawrence exhibition and I’ve been particularly preoccupied by these negotiations. Hopefully, they will lead to an impressive range of historical weapons, art, robes, documents and other memorabilia being displayed in Australia for the first time. Once our list has been finalised and we receive permission from the lenders to use images of these objects in our blog, we will tell you all about them.

The other distraction is that we are furiously engaged in writing text and captions for the exhibition, so we can give an exhibition designer something to work with in about a month’s time. Writing material like this is a bit of a balancing act, really. You need to give background and context for any items you put on display. But you don’t want the information to be too didactic. It needs to be both engaging and enlightening.

We are also putting sponsorship proposals together. Exhibitions involving substantial overseas loans are pretty expensive to put on. So if you’re at all interested . . .

Finally, I am really excited about another new blog that has just gone live on our website. George Lambert – Gallipoli and Palestine Landscapes is a travelling exhibition that will soon open in our Special Exhibition Gallery. The blog has been produced by the exhibition curator, Janda Gooding. Janda is also working with us on Lawrence of Arabia & the Light Horse as the art expert and we will feature some Lambert works in our exhibition. In fact, I was keen to feature a few works that Janda has selected for the Lambert exhibition, but unfortunately they’ll be on tour and not available for Lawrence. I’ll refer to some of those images in our blog later on. Lambert is a great blog and contains many fantastic images, so please have a look at it.

Mal

At last! Here are the photos from our December 2006 film screening of Lawrence of Arabia. Under these nearly authentic period disguises, our exhibition team is all but revealed.

 

 

 

So, to explain this rogues’ gallery from left to right: on the far left is Brad the Light Horseman, a colleague we roped in who happens to own all of the kit he is wearing. He is dressed as a trooper of the 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment, the first troops to enter Damascus when it was captured in 1918. They were recruited from Western Australia. The plumes you can see in Brad’s slouch hat are emu feathers (not kangaroo feathers).

To the right of Brad is A Nurse Called Robyn. Robyn is dressed as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).

In the centre is Save Our Souls Susie, who is also dressed as a VAD. In the background (from left to right) you can see Nigel, Mal and Brad. We are still looking for a frontal shot of Susie and will update this when we’ve found a better image.

The fourth image from the left is Nigel of Arabia, our historian. He stole the best of the agals that we borrowed for the night, and this left me, on the far right as Mal Not Really of Arabia looking a bit tired and sad because my agal did not sit very well.

Each of the images will open up in a larger size in a new window, should you be a sucker for punishment. I’ve kept the images in the post to thumbnail size in the interests of good taste!

Mal

Well, our little exhibition team did all go to watch Lawrence of Arabia in period costume as planned. There will soon be some very embarassing photos and perhaps some film footage displayed on this blog, so keep an eye out for them.

I thought that I’d give you my perspective of the film as the curator of our exhibition. (My apologies, for this is a long post and there are no images!) For me, looking again at this film after spending so much time immersed in everything Lawrence, was an eye-opener in many ways and I recognised and understood more clearly some aspects of the film that probably led to the many accolades it received in 1963. I read recently in Malcolm Brown’s Lawrence of Arabia, the life the legend that he believed the film was ‘in numerous respects more Hollywood than history’. On the whole I don’t really think that is the case, but I suppose it depends on your perspective. Sure enough, there are many factual, chronological and even geographical errors in the film and those can easily be found in a number of critiques elsewhere on the web. Most criticisms are summarised in Wikipedia and Lawrence’s authorised biographer Jeremy Wilson also details them here. I am not debating those observations.

I believe, however, that the film is a masterpiece of film making and, for those who are not interested in reading any of the many books written about Lawrence during the First World War, it does leave you with all the essential parts of the story. A rather enigmatic young English officer with some knowledge of the Middle East is sent by his superiors to assist the Arab Army and becomes a close adviser to Emir Feisal during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. I am sure that the story told by the film has inspired many people to read more about Lawrence and it probably also inspired further biographies about him. Why?

read on

As part of the Evolution Film Festival, Canberra’s Electric Shadows cinema will be screening David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia on 2 and 7 December 2006. This 1962 film is largely responsible for Lawrence’s enduring image with many people today.

We will be going to the Saturday evening screening (the show starts at 7.30 pm but get there early) to hand out some flyers about our exhibition in late 2007 and we will be inviting those attending to enter another competition that concerns the film itself. We won’t tell you here what the competition is until after we’ve released the flyers, so you’ll have to come to the cinema to find out! Yes, it is located in Akuna St, Canberra and that is in Australia.

You will be able to recognise the curatorial team as we will be appearing in period dress, including ‘Emir Nigel of Arabia’, ‘A Nurse called Robyn’, ‘Mal not really of Arabia’, ‘Brad the Light Horseman’ and ‘Save Our Souls Susie’ (who is actually the project manager for this exhibition).

Andrew Pike from Ronin Cinemas has asked me to give a brief introduction to the film and I’ll try to keep this under five minutes.

We all hope to see you there, even if you do have to purchase an air ticket!

Mal

The blog has recently received a number of comments that reveal the entry into Damascus in October 1918 still inspires strong feelings.

The question of who was the first to enter the city has been disputed ever since. The evidence now points to the men of Brigadier General L C Wilson’s 3rd Light Horse Brigade as being the first troops to enter Damascus in the early hours of 1 October. It has always been the intention of both the exhibition and the blog to draw attention to this fact as part of a wider historical story. Indeed, to illustrate this we plan to feature some of Brigadier Wilson’s material, as well as some of General Sir Harry Chauvel’s, along with original documents from the unit war diaries.

On 14 September 2006 we posted an article in this blog about the rare and lavishly produced 1926 subscribers’ edition of Lawrence’s Seven pillars of wisdom that the Memorial holds in its collection and that will also be featured in the exhibition. After the Memorial had purchased its 1926 edition Chauvel, who was a member of the Memorial’s then Board of Trustees, drew attention to some of the inaccuracies contained in the book. He wrote to the Memorial’s Director on 1 January 1936 that he ‘agreed to the purchase of this book as a very remarkable publication in connection with the late War likely to increase in value, not as an accurate record of events’. In a very detailed 13 page letter, Chauvel went on to outline his main concerns with Lawrence’s account. read on

Lawrence worked for the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo as an intelligence officer from December

1914 to November 1916. His knowledge of the Middle East gained through his pre-war studies and work as an archaeologist in Syria and Sinai, were put to good use in Cairo gathering and collating intelligence on enemy troops throughout the Turkish Empire and producing maps in association with the civilian Survey of Egypt.

In a letter to Charles Francis Bell in April 1915* he wrote:

Maps, maps, maps, hundreds of thousands of them, to be drawn, & printed, & packed up & sent off: – my job: – also in keeping track of Turkish Army movements.

According to Lawrence, intelligence was collated in Cairo from various sources including telegrams from Sofia, Belgrade, Petrograd, Athens, Basra and Tiflis. In his letter to Bell, Lawrence mentions that new information was also written into a book called the Handbook of the Turkish Army. The handbook was designed for extensive circulation and Lawrence, who also organised the printing of the book, mentions in his letter to Bell that thousands of copies were printed.

The principal authority on the handbook was Philip Graves. He was a former correspondent for The Times in the Middle East and from 1910, regularly passed information to British Intelligence about terrain, roads and railroad development in the Ottoman Empire. He was also the half brother of the poet Robert Graves.

Lawrence and other staff in the Cairo intelligence department contributed information to the handbook which required constant updating to take into account the latest reports they received. There were eight Cairo editions published between January 1915 and February 1916. Graves based these Cairo editions on a 1912 edition of the handbook which was produced by the War Office in London. Changes to the Turkish Army as a result of the outbreak of war were embodied in Graves’ first 1915 Cairo edition. read on

In 2005 we knew the Imperial War Museum was putting together a large exhibition on the whole life of T.E. Lawrence and at one stage we thought it may have been possible to ask for the exhibition to come to Australia after it had finished at the IWM. This of course proved to be impossible due to the large number of loans negotiated especially for the exhibition by the IWM. We decided to run our own exhibition, focussed more tightly on Lawrence’s wartime service and linking this to the operations of Australian forces in Egypt, Palestine and Syria at the same time. Our initial audience evaluation told us that Lawrence did not have much recognition with Australians, particularly those under 35, so from the outset we were aware of the need to raise Lawrence’s profile and strongly market this as our major exhibition for summer 2007-08.

By early 2006, a number of senior staff from the Memorial had seen the IWM exhibition whilst in London or passing through for various reasons. All were impressed with the exhibition’s scale and content, and it was decided that I should see it, as the curator of our own exhibition, and decide what items we’d like to try to borrow from various institutions and private owners in the UK.

In April 2006 I visited IWM London in Lambeth to see Lawrence of Arabia: the life, the legend. It took about three hours to get through the exhibition. It was due to close after Easter, only a couple of weeks later, and was pretty crowded. I took extensive notes about certain objects in the display that related to the focus of our own exhibition (the years 1914-18 and specifically the war in the desert). After this I spent quite a lot of time with Becky Wakeford, from the IWM’s exhibition design team, and then with Mark Whitmore (the IWM’s Director of Collections and my former boss in Australia). Having the IWM keen to assist our exhibition from the start was a big advantage.

read on