SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM

With an Introduction by Angus Calder As Angus Calder states in hisintroduction to this edition, Seven Pillars of Wisdom is one of the majorstatements about the fighting experience of the First World War'.Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on theWestern Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in theMiddle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge andends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' inDamascus. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is no 'Boys Own Paper' tale of Imperialtriumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands inthe tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings ofYeats, Eliot and Joyce.