So, Lawrence of Arabia is my favourite movie ever....

But, I've heard it's very historically inaccurate and glamourizes a guy who was effectively a douchebag. I don't have a vast knowledge of the whole conflict and such. Anyone know much about it? Were the movie, and Lawrence himself, full of shit?

The movie is pretty faithful to Lawrence's book, although abridged and with the cast of characters simplified. The movie really is a great work.

The book is called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. IMO the greatest adventure story of all time! Was Lawrence full of B.S.? self-promoting? Maybe a bit, but I think the core of it is basically true. He was also a great writer, so you can't miss the book.

If you get a chance, go to Jordan and visit Wadi Rum, Aqaba, Petra, and other sites of the Arab revolt. I just went with my wife last year. Most of the movie was filmed in or near Wadi Rum. The Hejaz Railway still exists and is used for potash.

Plus there's a mass of other historical sites - Jerash, Petra, Crusader castles. Awesome!

The political background is also well-covered in "A Peace to End All Peace", by David Fromkin. It covers in detail the betrayal of the Arabs by the French and British.

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805068848

Cost me $60 then lost it somewhere during a move befire I got to read it. :-(

excavated the ancient city of Ur. He and his fellow archaeologists of that era were prototypes for Indiana Jones I hear tell. Even Agatha Christi was part of that dig. I loved the movie except the end. It seemed they wrapped it up too neatly and tied it with a ribbon in the last fifteen minutes.

between it and super troopers. LOVE IT

and rated as such for good reasons

Lawrence was a man of his own demons that helped give birth to Saudi Arabia.

I read a great article in National Geographic once on the "true" Lawrence. It filled in a lot of details. Maybe you could find a copy of it.

According to "Based on a True Story:"

"He was the perfect man for the mission. No one believed that more than Lawrence himself, whose memoir of his Arabian adventures, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is considered as much a literary classic as Lean's film is a cinematic one, and it is just as filled with crazed exaggerations and shameless lies. Arguably the most outrageous fabrication perpetrated by Lawrence was the fiction that he and a band of gallant Arab guerillas commanded by Prince Feisal liberated Damascus from the Turks. The truth of the matter was that Anzac troops captured the city three days before Feisal's ragtag "camel corps" arrived. Lawrence wasn't even with the Arabs. At that time he was under an Australian commander. Lawrence's whopper was so blatant that Lean simply sidestepped it in the storytelling of his film. We never see Lawrence or Feisal's Arabs entering the city. Instead, we see the British arrive, only to be told that Lawrence and Feisal were already there. Which was true enough, but hardly the entire story."

to look at the self promotion he did before it was
the thing to do. ....... Still an amazing individual.

until then, try here: http://telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/index.htm

The entire text of "Pillars of Wisdom" are there - just waiting for you - and lots more besides!