Thomas Edward Lawrence was born on 16 August 1888 in Tremadog, Carnarvonshire (now Gwynedd), Wales in a house named Gorphwysfa, now known as Snowdon Lodge. His Anglo-Irish father Thomas Chapman had left his wife Edith after he fell in love and had a son with Sarah Junner, a young Scotswoman who had been engaged as governess to his daughters. Sarah was the daughter of Elizabeth Junner and John Lawrence, who worked as a ship's carpenter and was a son of the household in which Elizabeth had been a servant. She was dismissed four months before Sarah was born.

At the age of 15, Lawrence and his schoolfriend Cyril Beeson cycled around Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, visited almost every village's parish church, studied their monuments and antiquities, and made rubbings of their monumental brasses. Lawrence and Beeson monitored building sites in Oxford and presented their finds to the Ashmolean Museum. The Ashmolean's Annual Report for 1906 said that the two teenage boys "by incessant watchfulness secured everything of antiquarian value which has been found." In the summers of 1906 and 1907, Lawrence and Beeson toured France by bicycle, collecting photographs, drawings, and measurements of medieval castles. In August 1907 Lawrence wrote home: "The Chaignons & the Lamballe people, complimented me on my wonderful French: I have been asked twice since I arrived what part of France I came from".  From 1907 to 1910, Lawrence read History at Jesus College, Oxford. In the summer of 1909, he set out alone on a three-month walking tour of crusader castles in Ottoman Syria, during which he travelled 1,000 mi (1,600 km) on foot. Lawrence graduated with First Class Honours after submitting a thesis titled The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture--to the End of the 12th Century, based on his field research with Beeson in France, notably in Chalus, and his solo research in the Middle East. Lawrence was fascinated by the Middle Ages with his brother Arnold writing in 1937 that for him "medieval researches" were a "dream way of escape from bourgeois England".  In 1910 Lawrence was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist in the Middle East, at Carchemish, in the expedition that D. G. Hogarth was setting up on behalf of the British Museum. Hogarth arranged a "Senior Demyship", a form of scholarship, for Lawrence at Magdalen College, Oxford, to fund Lawrence's work at PS100 a year.  In December 1910, he sailed for Beirut and on his arrival went to Jbail (Byblos), where he studied Arabic. He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under Hogarth, R. Campbell Thompson of the British Museum, and Leonard Woolley, until 1914. He later stated that everything which he had accomplished he owed to Hogarth. While excavating at Carchemish, Lawrence met Gertrude Bell. In 1912 Lawrence worked briefly with Flinders Petrie at Kafr Ammar in Egypt.  The chief elements of the Arab strategy, developed chiefly by Faisal and Lawrence, were firstly to avoid capturing Medina, and secondly to extend northwards through Maan and Deraa to Damascus and beyond. The Emir Faisal wanted to lead regular attacks against the Ottomans, which Lawrence persuaded him to drop. Lawrence wrote about the Bedouin as a fighting force:  "The value of the tribes is defensive only and their real sphere is guerilla warfare. They are intelligent, and very lively, almost reckless, but too individualistic to endure commands, or fight in line, or to help each other. It would, I think, be possible to make an organized force out of them...The Hejaz war is one of dervishes against regular forces-and we are on the side of the dervishes. Our text-books do not apply to its conditions at all".  Medina was an attractive target for the revolt as Islam's second-holiest site, and because its Ottoman garrison was weakened by disease and isolation. It became clear that it was advantageous to leave it there rather than try to capture it, while continually attacking, but not permanently breaking, the Hejaz railway south from Damascus. This prevented the Ottomans from making effective use of their troops at Medina, and forced them to dedicate many resources to defending and repairing the railway line.  The movement north to Damascus and eventually Aleppo is interesting in the context of the Sykes-Picot agreement. While it is not known when Lawrence learned the details of Sykes-Picot, nor if or when he briefed Faisal on what he knew, there is good reason to think that both these things happened, and earlier rather than later. In particular, the Arab strategy of northward extension makes perfect sense given the Sykes-Picot language that spoke of an independent Arab entity in Syria, which would only be granted if the Arabs liberated the territory themselves. The French, and some of their British Liaison officers, were specifically uncomfortable about the northward movement, as it would weaken French colonial claims.  Lawrence was involved in the build-up to the capture of Damascus in the final weeks of the war. He was not present at the city's formal surrender, much to his disappointment and contrary to instructions that he had issued, having arrived several hours after the city had fallen. Lawrence entered Damascus around 9 am on 1 October 1918 but was the third arrival of the day; the first was the 10th Australian Light Horse Brigade, led by Major A.C.N. 'Harry' Olden, who formally accepted the surrender of the city from acting Governor Emir Said. Lawrence was instrumental in establishing a provisional Arab government under Faisal in newly liberated Damascus - which he had envisioned as the capital of an Arab state. Faisal's rule as king, however, came to an abrupt end in 1920, after the battle of Maysaloun, when the French Forces of General Gouraud entered Damascus under the command of General Mariano Goybet, destroying Lawrence's dream of an independent Arabia.  During the closing years of the war, Lawrence sought to convince his superiors in the British government that Arab independence was in their interests - with mixed success. The secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and Britain contradicted the promises of independence that he had made to the Arabs and frustrated his work.  In 1918, he cooperated with war correspondent Lowell Thomas for a short period. During this time, Thomas and his cameraman Harry Chase shot a great deal of film and many photographs, which Thomas used in a highly lucrative slide-show presentation that toured the world after the war.  [Lowell Thomas] went to Jerusalem where he met Lawrence, whose enigmatic figure in Arab uniform fired his imagination. With Allenby's permission he linked up with Lawrence for a brief couple of weeks ... Returning to America, Thomas, early in 1919, started his lectures, supported by moving pictures of veiled women, Arabs in their picturesque robes, camels and dashing Bedouin cavalry, which took the nation by storm, after running at Madison Square Garden in New York. On being asked to come to England, he made the condition he would do so if asked by the King and given Drury Lane or Covent Garden ... He opened at Covent Garden on 14 August 1919 ... And so followed a series of some hundreds of lectures - film shows, attended by the highest in the land ...

What was the Fall of Damascus?
the city's formal surrender,