411. Lawrence of Arabia: The Truth Behind The Legend (Part 1)

Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me. William? During this is the first of four episodes we've really been looking forward to this on TE Lawrence the Man, the myth, the film, the wreckage. And uh William, I mean, fr from the start, uh I guess people have a very strong image of of Lawrence of Arabia in their head. And I mean it it's thanks to this Peter O'Toole glittering blue eyes kind of iconography that surrounds the story. It is. Uh and I think there's two things to say right up front. One is that Lawrence really didn't look very like tool at all, not least the fact that Lawrence was a kind of midget.

Uh another two was a judge. Well I like to call him fun size. I think I've c I've referred to him on this podcast before as fun size. He's like you know, sort of mini. He's only a slightly taller than me. But yeah. I think you and he would be the great double act. Uhhuh. Apart from the height, what else? I mean he was just wasn't as beautiful looking, was he? Yeah, no, he wasn't and and The at the center of it, I mean what I really would like to try and r discuss and chew over in the series. is the idea that my generation grew up with that basically sort of Lawrence liberated the Arabs. Uh and that's you know, uh for all the

um th the uh depictions of uh of the the British establishment as stuff shirts and Lawrence as this rebel who uh who uh gets double crossed. Um there's still the idea out there. um the takeaway that you get from the film is slightly that um he went to the first world war as a liberator, that one romantic Englishman united the squabbling tribes, led them to freedom in a you know uh an era when we are seeing on our phones every day Gaza when it's a major election issue, in fact, even in Britain at the moment, about the how how uh we respond to what's going on in Gaza, whatever view you take of it. Um

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