HOW ACCURATE WAS DAVID LEANS LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?
Lean’s 1962 film, starring Omar Sharif, and Peter O’Toole as TE Lawrence, is one of the great cinematic epics. Having said that – and although the film won seven Academy Awards – as in TE’s own writings, fact and fiction are often interspersed. Though the most stunning settings were filmed against a backdrop of the real Wadi Rum, the film was also shot on location in Spain and Morocco. There are geographical inaccuracies in the dialogue and purists complain about out-of-place architecture. Though the attack on Aqaba was important, the scale of the battle and the size of Aqaba were exaggerated. It’s also widely accepted by historians that Feisal’s and Lawrence’s men were not the first of the Allies to enter Damascus: that honour went to the Anzac cavalry. One of TE’s brothers, Arnold, said that he hated the film, calling it “pretentious and false”. The American journalist Thomas – perhaps miffed that in the film he was portrayed as “Jackson Bentley” – was even blunter. The man who marke
