LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935). Autograph letter signed ('T.E. Shaw') to [John] Buchan, n.p. [written on the verso of a page with the letterhead of 14 Barton Street, the house of Herbert Baker], 1 December 1926, one page, 8vo.

LAWRENCE, Thomas Edward (1888-1935). Autograph letter signed ('T.E. Shaw') to [John] Buchan, n.p. [written on the verso of a page with the letterhead of 14 Barton Street, the house of Herbert Baker], 1 December 1926, one page, 8vo.

Lawrence acknowledges Buchan's help in negotiating with the Prime Minister (Stanley Baldwin) his return to the RAF. 'I go to Uxbridge tomorrow preparatory to embarkation to India. Your copy of my book [the Subscribers' Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom ] is not yet ready: it is being rather specially bound. This copy is one of those which I am giving the fellows who did the Arab Revolt with me ... I wanted you to ask Mr Baldwin if he would care to accept it. You & he did me the best turn I've ever had done to me'.

When making the arrangements for the lavishly produced Subscribers' Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom Lawrence had originally planned to give away a number of copies to his fellow-workers for the Arab cause although in the end there were not enough to go round. Some of those given away were imperfect, including the one offered here to Baldwin, in which, he writes, plates are missing but 'if he likes books, as I'm told, he may prefer a broken copy to none at all'.

The occasion for Lawrence's gratitude to Buchan and Baldwin was of particular importance to him. He had re-enlisted in the Tank Corps in 1923, as T.E. Shaw (following the discovery by the press that he had joined the RAF the previous year as John Hume Ross). In April 1925 he contrived to meet Buchan (to whom he had been introduced by Lionel Curtis) in the street, taking the opportunity to speak of his wish to return to the RAF (Letters, ed. M. Brown (1988), 280 n.3), a wish that was turned down by the Minister for Air, Sir Samuel Hoare. With the help of Buchan and Bernard Shaw, who used their influence with Baldwin, he was allowed to transfer back to his preferred service later in the year. He wrote to Charlotte Shaw on 4 July 1925 that 'About the RAF John Buchan seems to have worked the oracle'. The friendship between Buchan and Lawrence, which at this stage had hardly developed, was to become increasingly warm, encouraged by their common interest in literature, and Lawrence was a frequent visitor to Elsfield, the Buchans' home outside Oxford.