Lawrance of Arabia - don't buy his book

Lawrance of Arabia didn't really have the knack of book marketing -

A LOST letter from Lawrence of Arabia in which he tells his friend, “Don’t buy a copy of my book it is absurdly expensive,” is expected to raise £28,000 at auction.

But his friend Francis Rennell, later Lord Rennell seemingly ignored the advice from TE Lawrence, as the letter was discovered inside a rare copy of his book, The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom.

In the letter, Lawrence writes: “You don’t really want one, you know.

“Thirty guineas is an absurd price.

“Wash out the idea,” The letter and the book are valued at £28,000 and will be auctioned at Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh, next Wednesday.

Elsewhere in the letter North Wales-born Lawrence tells of his recent move to the RAF cadet college in Cranwell, Lincolnshire.

And he describes the county as “a picture of dead earth in green and grey”, although he was upbeat about his time there.

He wrote: “The camp is good.

“Also the fellows, also the life. Mark me down for a further spell of quite happy existence.” The auctioneers’ book specialist Simon Vickers said the discovery of both the letter and the book is “exciting” and “rare”.

The book subsquently came out in many editions. It inspired David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence Of Arabia, some of which was filmed in the dunes at Merthyr Mawr.