17. One of Modern History’s Most Romantic Homosexual Figures
Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888 – 1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was one of modern history’s most romantic gay figures. He was the fifth illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman, a married baronet who left his family for his daughters’ governance, Lawrence’s mother. The couple assumed the mother’s surname, lived together and raised a family as “Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence”, without marrying. They eventually settled in Oxford, were Thomas Edward, who preferred to go by his initials T.E., attended college. Lawrence was a history buff from early on, with a particular fondness for Medieval and military architecture, and a love of travel. He combined his two interests and spent much of his youth exploring old churches and castles. He traveled to France to study Medieval fortifications, and to Syria and Palestine to study Crusader castles.
Lawrence submitted a thesis on the subject that earned him a history degree with honors from Oxford, in 1910. He then secured a fellowship and joined an archaeological expedition that excavated Hittite settlements on the Euphrates, from 1911 to 1914. In his free time, he traveled around the Middle East and got to know the region and its people. The lands in which he worked and traveled were part of the Ottoman Empire, of whose leanings in case of a general European war the British were unsure. So Lawrence, under the guise of scholarly pursuits, also undertook map-making reconnaissance missions in Ottoman territories. Their results proved extremely valuable in World War I.