Word: aldington
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Aldington goes to infinite pains, complete with family genealogies, to prove that T. E. Lawrence and his four brothers were the illegitimate sons of a baronet named Chapman. He goes deep into the family's private history to debunk tales of his hero's childhood precocity. Stirred to action by a former biographer's statement that Lawrence claimed to have read "all the books" in the Oxford Union Library, Aldington lists the total (50,000) to prove the task impossible. Even Lawrence's claim to have ridden camelback at the pace of 100 miles...
...Lawrence appeared in England, and set off a fury of charge and countercharge. Its respected publisher (Collins) held up publication of the book for 18 months while lawyers checked it, and friends of Lawrence were asked to rebut its accusations. Lawrence of Arabia, A Biographical Enquiry, by Novelist Richard Aldington, says without mincing words that, far from being a hero, Lawrence of Arabia was a misbegotten fraud, a perverted charlatan, a pretentious demagogue, possibly a homosexual, certainly a poseur, a liar and a plain fake. The effect, as one paper put it, was "as if someone charged that Nelson knew...
...Search for Fraud. In writing Lawrence's life, Aldington (author of a sardonic bestselling 1929 novel of World War I, Death of a Hero) claims to have started with an open mind. But in the course of his four years of research, he turned up many claims by Lawrence and his enthusiastic biographers (Lowell Thomas, Robert Graves) that did not seem to jibe with the facts. The chief of these was Lawrence's boast that he had once been offered the post of High Commissioner for Egypt. There was no record of such an offer in writing...
Ezra Pound could recognize an original talent. He tried to take over the newcomer, wined & dined him, tossed him fraternally over his head in a restaurant to demonstrate his prowess at jujitsu, invited him to join the sessions where Pound and other poets like Richard Aldington and Hilda Doolittle rewrote each other's poetry. Pound tried rewriting a Frost verse, announced triumphantly, "Well, I've got you by four syllables. You did it in 53 and I got it down to 49." Frost never even looked. "I'll bet you've spoiled all my nice little...
...Lawrence: Portrait of a Genius But .... by Richard Aldington. A lively life of the icon-smashing author of Lady Chatterley's Lover (TIME...