The Boy In The Mask: The Hidden World of Lawrence of Arabia

by Dick Benson-Gyles

This groundbreaking work chronicles the author’s quest to uncover previously unexplained areas of the life of T.E. Lawrence, the enigmatic desert fighter, aircraftman and writer. The result of years of painstaking research, it contains new material that throws a completely fresh light on Lawrence’s concealed private life. Following an extraordinary journey to find the unknown man behind the many myths, the book’s two halves are underpinned by the author’s personal mission to reveal the man behind the mask; the secret Lawrence.

Part One reveals Lawrence’s lost Irish heritage – his father’s real family (the aristocratic, Anglo-Irish Chapmans), his abandoned half-sisters (with evocative interviews), his illegitimacy, and his mother’s obscure forebears. The author shows, for the first time, that his concealment from his titled and wealthy Irish family affected Lawrence more deeply than previously thought; and a surprising truth emerges – that he thought of himself not as English but as Irish. This compelling narrative is powerfully supported by a wide range of unseen photographs. These include his Chapman family and forebears, views of Killua Castle and South Hill (the family seats in Westmeath), and of his time in the RAF during the 1930s.

The second part, which follows the author’s adventurous travels to the Middle East in search of Lawrence’s lost love, has a surprising dénouement – a convincing solution to the cryptic dedication to ‘S.A.’ of his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The author also presents new evidence to vindicate Lawrence’s account in the Seven Pillars of the brutal sexual assault on him at Deraa during the Arab Revolt of 1916–18, a controversial episode that has often been questioned.

312 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2016

Reviews

[Denise]

This isn't so much a comprehensive biography as an attempt at analysing two areas of Lawrence's life and personality that very much expects the reader to already be familiar with his biography. The first half details an exhaustive study of Lawrence's ancestry, tracing both his father's Anglo-Irish forebears and, on a lesser scale, his mother's background. I found this part mildly interesting, but also rather found myself wishing the author would move on to something else after a while. The second half of the book meanwhile is given to Benson-Gyles's theory regarding the identity of the mysterious S.A. to whom Lawrence dedicated Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, which quickly devolves into an obsession with "proving" that without a shadow of a doubt Lawrence must have been heterosexual and a lot of grasping at straws to uncover a definitive female love interest. Frankly, it's a lot of speculation and not much else - to claim otherwise is disingenious at best, and I fail to see the point.

[Bobby D]

Benson-Gyles’s book begins: “I first met T.E. Lawrence in the Odon Cinema, Richmond.” From that first sentence you know this is not your usual latest Lawrence of Arabia biography. I somehow missed adding this book to my extensive collection of Lawrence books in 2016. I, like Benson-Gyles, discovered Lawrence in 1962 when dragged to the film by my Father, who had already seen it once (that same week).
I found myself buying a copy of this book after reading an article by Mr. Benson-Gyles in the latest journal of “The T.E. Lawrence Society, Oxford” (which I am a member). His article is titled, “The S.A. Riddle: Mystery Solved”. The article is a well-researched and entertaining argument regarding the identity of Lawrence’s dedication to his masterpiece “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. (However, the enigma of who, or what place S.A stands for was most likely forever lost with Lawrence’s motorcycle death in 1935.)
The theme of the journal article occupies most of the latter half of the book. This I kind of expected. What is quite extraordinary is the research and early book chapters covering the history of the Chapman lineage. Lawrence was illegitimate and his father was an Irish lord named Chapman who ran away to England with his Scottish housemaid and had five boys leaving behind a wife and four daughters. Numerous biographers have speculated on how Lawrence accepted (or not) his illegitimacy and wonder if this indeed impacted his sexuality. One of the rather wonderful things about Lawrence is that he was an extraordinary man who seemed to live in a past world of knights and round tables. Dick Benson-Gyles brings out that Lawrence was a romantic but not necessarily sexual and provides a lot of early life information to illustrate this.
This is not a book for someone new to Lawrence of Arabia who wants to know what can be found in a good biography by Jeremy Wilson. Or in Lawrence’s own “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. This is a book for those of us who are a bit fanatical and met Lawrence on David Lean’s big screen.