but for what he actually did do: an “intelligence” officer with no significant military training who was seconded, along with other British officers, to a group of Bedu to assist them in stirring up trouble along the Hedjaz Railway as a way to tie down Turkish forces and interdict supplies to the garrison at Medina. For an amateur he did a fairly good job of it and that is admirable.

As you no doubt know, TEL patently DID NOT start the Arab Revolt nor did he “lead” it. Allenby clearly saw the advantage of having the Bedu fighting on the British side and thus securing his own LOC while causing a certain amount of disruption and dispersion of Turkish forces.

TEL wasn’t an insurgent as much as he was a liaison officer and the “insurgency” was carefully crafted and controlled by the British to support their aim of keeping the Turks occupied with fighting in Palestine and to deny as much territory as possible to the French in the post war slicing up of the Middle East.

That he was quirky, eccentric, and self promoting is evident in TEL’s meandering memoir, the popularity of which was greatly assisted by the entrepreneurial Lowell Thomas and a host of other well placed admirers. More useful are his 27 Articles in the Arab Bulletin were good as TTP’s for operating with the Bedu and do have good general recommendations for any military advisor.

Another "bad" influence is David Lean’s film which, while cinematographically beautiful, has about as much relation to the reality of the Arab Revolt as Tolkien’s hobbits have to old English gentry. Hollywood as history is quite dangerous indeed, but has gone a long way towards setting TEL up on that pillar.

Glubb Pasha was much more the interesting chap.