You know I’d be lying if I didn’t say TE Lawrence!
Lawrence (of Arabia) holds endless fascination for me. Like every great historical figure, there’s so much myth surrounding him, but the further you dig, the more you realize he was just a very normal person at heart. People love to gossip about the salacious parts of his life, with varying degrees of accuracy. But did you know he had very wholesome friendships with the Hardys (yes, that Thomas Hardy) and the Shaws (yes, that George Bernard Shaw)? And that at the end of his all-too-short life, he abandoned celebrity status for relative anonymity, working on rescue boats for the RAF?
There are certain aspects of his story that I relate to very much, good and bad alike. I don’t hearken after the old days, but I’d give a great deal to have a cup of tea with “Ned,” listening to some Elgar and philosophizing on the state of the world. It’s sad we don’t even have a recording of his voice, in spite of recordings of Churchill and other close contemporaries. But if I were to speculate, I imagine he’d prefer it that way.
Classics Considered 
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