The Blond Bedouin

In contrast to Sir Henry Havelock, Lawrence of Arabia remains a name to conjure with. The story of the British intelligence officer who lived among Bedouin Arabs, became a commander of their guerrilla army, and led them to freedom from Ottoman tyranny during the latter part of the First World War, has proved to be one of the enduring myths of military manhood in twentieth-century Western culture. In 1988-9, one hundred years after his birth and seventy years after his Arabian adventure was at an end, two major new biographies appeared, together with an exhibition in London. ¹ The contemporaneous re-issue, in a painstakingly restored version, of David Lean and Robert Bolt's 225-minute epic film Lawrence of Arabia (first released in 1962) ‘attracted extraordinary attention’ when released in the United States: ‘Pictures of a youthful Peter O’Toole, resplendent in white robes, have emblazoned newspapers and magazines across the country. ² This success, repeated in Britain and elsewhere, suggests the continuing fascination of the Lawrence legend, and perhaps most especially, the arresting visual iconography of the ‘white Arab’. As a marketing hook provoking curiosity about the film, this image establishes the motivating enigma of its narrative as one concerning the identity of the hero. With its intimations of cross-dressing and disguise, it promises the pleasures of narrative play with cultural difference in an exotic ‘Oriental’ setting; but also of the spectacle of that most masculine of men, the soldier, elaborately arrayed in flowing skirts, in transgression of gender fixities.