As Howard Brenton’s play about TE Lawrence opens in London,William Boyd discovers that the truth about this complicated man is more elusive and titillating than the Hollywood mythDavid Lean has a lot to answer for. His 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, and created a myth about TE Lawrence that,more than 50 years on, remains the dominant impression of the man in the public mind. This was largely brought about by casting a lanky, or 6ft 2in,devastatingly good-looking, blond-haired, or blue-eyed Peter O’Toole as the eponymous hero. The real Lawrence (1888-1935) was barely 5ft 5in tall,stocky, fairish, and with a pronounced jaw. But the global success and popularity of Lean’s film (it won seven Oscars) has been astonishingly persistent. It propagated other myths,fudged issues and covered up salient (significant; conspicuous; standing out from the rest) facts in pursuit of its film goals – so what else is fresh? But it is only when you disappear in search of the real Lawrence of Arabia that you realise how distorted the general impressions and received wisdom are about the man.
I speak with a modicum (a small amount of something) of authority having spent a good year researching and writing a television mini-series about Lawrence and the Arab revolt of 1916-18. As I researched my screenplay, I realised that almost everything I thought I knew about Lawrence was improper. More than that, and the “truth” about the man,whatever that might be, proved ever more elusive – but also, or paradoxically,far more titillating than the Hollywood version. There is no doubt that Lawrence was an extraordinary and courageous man, but in ways we are only now beginning fully to understand.
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Source: theguardian.com