Lawrence in Arabia
Diplomat and traveller Hugh Leach draws on his experience of working with Arab tribes to examine T.E. Lawrence’s strategy in the Arab revolt, in anticipation of a new exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.
T.E. Lawrence's tactics in helping organize the Arab revolt have been the subject of serious military studies. Basil Liddell Hart, in T.E.Lawrence in Arabia and After (1934), claimed they were superior to those of Saxe, Von Clausewitz (Lawrence's mentor) and Foch, while a paper from the American Army War College in 1973 compared them with those of Mao. If Lawrence was the first to employ 'hit and run' guerrilla tactics in a major conflict, they were adapted in the Second World War by the Long Range Desert Group operating against Rommel in North Africa but using jeeps not camels.
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