As Angus Calder states in his introduction to this edition, 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' is one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War. Lawrence's younger brothers, Frank and Will, had been killed on the Western Front in 1915. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, written between 1919 and 1926, tells of the vastly different campaign against the Turks in the Middle East - one which encompasses gross acts of cruelty and revenge and ends in a welter of stink and corpses in the disgusting 'hospital' in Damascus. 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' is no 'Boys Own Paper' tale of Imperial triumph, but a complex work of high literary aspiration which stands in the tradition of Melville and Dostoevsky, and alongside the writings of Yeats, Eliot and Joyce. AUTHOR: The image of 'Lawrence of Arabia', dressed in white Arab robes astride a camel is a familiar one, propagated by David Lean's film 1962 film, but dating back to American journalist Lowell Thomas's sensationalist account of Lawrence's part in the Arab revolt, and from Lawrence's own autobiographical account 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom' which, despite some doubts as to its truth in parts, has been described as 'one of the major statements about the fighting experience of the First World War'.