Revolt In The Desert

by T.E. Lawrence

Revolt in the Desert (1924) is a personal account by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) of the 2 year Arab Revolt during the Great War. Beginning with the rout of King Feisal’s army by the Turks at Medina in 1916, it follows the campaign through to the fall of Damascus in 1918. As the Turks fled northwards, Feisal’s irregular cavalry entered Damascus unopposed, and “the Eastern war, perhaps the whole war, drew to a close”. The book is an abridgement of his 1919 opus, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which Winston Churchill described as a “treasure of the English language”, noting that “If Lawrence had never done anything except write this book as a mere work of the imagination his fame would last - to quote Macaulay’s hackneyed phrase - ‘as long as the English language is spoken in any quarter of the globe’…But it is fact, not fiction”. A gripping history of the Arab Insurgency - it tells the story of the Imperial Camel Corps, intrigues within the British Intelligence Services, the courage of the RAF, the sacrifices of the Ghurka and Indian infantry, and the long and bitter campaign that did so much to make the face of the modern Middle East