In doing so, Lawrence sought to highlight what he perceived as the betrayal inflicted on the Arabs in the postwar settlement-in which the Western powers carved former Ottoman territories into French and British mandates, frustrating Arab dreams of self-determination-and to assuage his own ever-present guilt over this outcome.

In Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence’s bestselling account of the campaign in the desert, he sought to downplay British support for the Arab revolt and emphasize Arab contributions. To be fair, many of the myths and misperceptions that have arisen around Lawrence and his war are partly legends of his own creation. In their place, Johnson reveals the true nature of both Lawrence’s war in the desert and his broader contribution to our understanding of irregular warfare-particularly as it relates to conventional campaigns against peer adversaries. Rob Johnson, the director of the Changing Character of War Centre at Oxford University and a former British Army officer, effectively strips away these myths and dissects recent misapplications of Lawrence’s thinking in Lawrence of Arabia on War: The Campaign in the Desert 1916–1918. His writings on guerrilla war and on advising indigenous forces, meanwhile, are perhaps best known today for their brief appearances to buttress American and British counterinsurgency theory and doctrine. He appears to modern observers as the pensive Englishman photographed in flowing white Arab robes, or the hero portrayed by Peter O’Toole in the Academy Award–winning 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia.

Lawrence pillars of wisdom