TV review: The Legacy Of Lawrence Of Arabia

Published on Sunday 17 January 2010 21:00

NEAR a military base in Afghanistan, soldiers can have their photos taken in a Bedouin tent, something to send home to show that they're in the midst of an ancient Arabic culture.

The tent is inside a shipping container, mind you, along from a branch of Subway; it's a studio prop which is as near as they'll get to actually living among the people of the country. And it's as far as one could get from the intensity of immersion which gave TE Lawrence the geographical suffix to his name.

And yet, as Rory Stewart pointed out in this interesting documentary, The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia, those same US soldiers are still encouraged to read his works and are shown clips of the film of his life; he's still held up as the model for foreigners fighting in the region. But, Stewart argued, the lessons of his life aren't being followed.

The actions which made Lawrence's name – fighting with the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire, a thrilling and bloody sideline to the First World War – came out of his deep knowledge of the region. Aged 21, he'd walked 1,000 miles alone across Syria, walking nine or ten hours a day and depending on the hospitality of local strangers in village houses at night. Boggle, for a moment, at the idea of most of today's students merrily going off to do something like that – they'd be freaking out at not getting phone reception to update their Facebook page. This impressive feat, along with time managing local workers on archaeology digs, showed how Lawrence had become steeped in the country and its people.

So when he was snapped up as a spy and teamed with Faisal al-Hussein – later the first king of Iraq and no relation, obviously, to Saddam – Lawrence was primed to adapt British military tactics to the completely different environment of the desert. They became, with a certain unfunny historical irony, terrorists, targeting the Ottoman railway to terrify the empire's travellers. By the time he staggered into Cairo to report back, "a little silk-robed, barefooted man offering to hobble the enemy", as he described himself, he had changed irrevocably.

But Lawrence didn't yet know that Britain and France were planning to betray the promise of independence for the Arabs to divide up the land between themselves, a line drawn on the map "between the 'e' of Acre to the last 'k' or Kirkuk". When he found out, he wrote: "We are getting them to fight for us on a lie and I can't stand it." Osama bin Laden, among others, still holds a grudge.

Rory Stewart, who admitted that Lawrence had been his boyhood hero, was clearly thoroughly suited to his subject. Like him, he'd walked across Arab areas at a young age, staying in hundreds of village houses overnight. He's been a soldier, a diplomat, a travel writer and governor of an Iraqi province. But unlike Lawrence, he's now a prospective parliamentary candidate with, surely, a political agenda.

Making his TV debut, Stewart has a small worried face and a tendency to swallow his words at times. There was so much information in this first part of the two-part series that some points got lost. Without dumbing it down, it might have been an idea to begin with an overview of why Lawrence was so important and what he did. At one time every schoolchild could have told you, but fewer know his story these days and even the iconic movie is being forgotten.