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Right: The story of Lawrence of Arabia was a popular topic for magazinesBelow: Advert for David Lean’s 1962 fi lm, Lawrence of Arabialatter is the fl awed, brooding, angst-ridden hero of the post-imperial age.I would like to think that our Lawrence – that of myself, Nick Saunders, and the Great Arab Revolt Project – is a ‘true’ Lawrence, an authentic portrait of the man, his achievements, and his times, since it is the fruit of ten years’ of archival and archaeological research. Between 2006 and 2014, Bristol University put a team of about 30 people into the fi eld for two weeks each year, locating, surveying, and recording the archaeological remains of the 1916–18 war between the Arabs and the Ottoman Turks. We found fortifi ed railway stations, hilltop redoubts, blockhouses, and military encampments. We even found the site of an overnight camping-ground used by Lawrence and the Hijaz Armoured Car Company (see box), and also investigated the site of the Hallat Ammar Ambush, where Lawrence and 80 Arabs blew up a train, shot down the soldiers on-board, then looted the carriages before disappearing back into the desert. The results of our research will be rolled out over the next two years. My book, Lawrence of ArabiaÕs War, is a multi-disciplinary military history that uses political, anthropological, and archaeological insights to present a rounded view of the war in Sinai, Arabia, Palestine and Syria between 1914 and 1918. A second book, an archaeological and anthropological synthesis by my colleague Nick Saunders, will follow next year.Meantime, the National Civil War Centre at Newark will be hosting an exhibition between October 2017 and April 2018, based largely on our archaeological fi nds, but supplemented with loan material. The four main themes of the Lawrence of ArabiaÕs War exhibition will be ‘A Romantic Orientalist’, ‘Tradition and Modernity’, ‘Modern Guerrilla Warfare’, and ‘Hero, Celebrity, Legend’. A range of events will be held in association with the exhibition, including performances of Jan Woolf’s new play, The Man with the Gold, a re-examination of Lawrence in the context of the contemporary Middle Eastern crisis. The books, the exhibition, and the play – as well as lectures, interviews, and articles like this one – will provide us with opportunities to present our conclusions about Lawrence: to create, if you like, our own representation of the legend. Here are some highlights.Was he a teller of tall tales? Not really. Perhaps, as a rather mischievous young man before the war, he sometimes embellished for effect, but a much darker man emerged from the ordeal of 1916–18, a man riddled with guilt and self-doubt, and his great war memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, turns out to have been exceptionally accurate. We have ground-truthed much of the detail, locating the desert fortifi cations he observed, charting the routes he followed, collecting the detritus of the battles he fought. Because of this, we have no reason to question other, less easily verifi ed testimony in the book – especially when we seem to be peering into the deeply troubled mind of man writing in part as an exercise in confession, expiation, and catharsis. “In our two years’ partnership under fi re,” he writes of his role in the Arab Revolt, “they [the Arabs he led] grew LAWRENCE OF ARABIAwww.nadfas.org.uk NADFAS REVIEW / SUMMER 2016 31