Section III

The 1919 Harry Chase portraits

In early 1918 the American journalist Lowell Thomas, accompanied by his photographer Harry Chase, visited the Middle East looking for material that might stimulate American interest in the war. Their travels included brief visits to Jerusalem, Akaba, Guweira and Petra. Harry Chase took many photographs, but only a small number of Lawrence.

After the war, Thomas developed an illustrated lecture about this Middle Eastern visit. He and Chase brought the lecture (described as a 'travelogue')  to London in 1919.

It was quickly apparent that the British public was intrigued by the role that Lawrence had played. Accordingly, Thomas decided to change the focus of his presentation, and re-named the travelogue: 'With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia'. By coincidence, this was extremely useful to Lawrence, who at the time was struggling to reverse the defeat of his policies about the future of the Middle East that had taken place at the Paris Peace Conference. The Thomas lectures, which were immensely popular, gave Lawrence a degree of publicity he had never previously experienced. Newspapers became keen to print his attacks on Government policy, and politicians began to pay attention to his views. At the end of 1920 he was invited to join the Colonial Office, under Winston Churchill, as an adviser on Arab Affairs.  

In order to strengthen the emphasis on Lawrence in the 1919 travelogue, Thomas needed more photographs of him than Chase had taken in 1918. Lawrence therefore agreed to a series of posed portraits in Arab dress. These were taken in London in 1919 and used to illustrate the lecture and Thomas's subsequent books.

Ref 3012	Ref 3013
Two very similar shots of Thomas and Chase taken in London Click on either image to enter this section

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T.E. Lawrence Studies - www.telawrence.info - is compiled and edited by Jeremy Wilson. Its costs are sponsored by Castle Hill Press