Lawrence was an amazing warrior and writer, as well as an incredibly complex and conflicted person. There’s no substitute for reading Seven Pillars, but Scott Anderson’s grasp of WW1 complexities including Lawrence is pretty damn amazing too.

It baffles me that Lawrence is required reading more often in the west given his story can directly be tied to the current geopolitics of the Middle East. I’d always wondered growing up why some Muslim people hated the west so fiercely and there it is.