Misfiling as prologue...to War

LAWRENCE of Arabia’s vision for the Middle East has been revealed in a map he created after the First World War.

T. E. Lawrence, the British colonel whose wartime collaboration with the Arabs against the Turks was immortalised in David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), attempted to reward Britain’s Arab allies by dividing territory between them.

His sympathy for the cause of Arab self-determination is well known, but the full details contained in the map eluded historians because it was filed at the National Archives under the wrong date.