A junior intelligence officer in the field, Lawrence had the duty to deliver the sovereigns, and act as liaison between the Sherif and British officials in Cairo. As he describes in Seven Pillars, he set about enlarging his mission, attaching himself to Faisal, the son whom the Sherif had appointed to lead the campaign. "I felt at first glance," Lawrence gushed in a much-quoted passage in his book, "that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek — the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory." Actually he had come to Arabia because his superiors had posted him there. A second lieutenant fantasising that he was seeking the leader of the Arab Revolt for the purpose of giving him independence had strayed into the territory of Baron Münchhausen.

The British were less than clear in the promises they gave to the Arabs about the future, and for good reason: they had a war to win. One of the proposed post-war plans involved sharing Arab provinces with France. What Lawrence called "biffing the French" was one concept he cherished, and another was that Arabs should form a "brown dominion" within the British Empire. Confronted by the planners' conflicting promises, he told his commanding officer that the British had been calling the Arabs to fight with a promise of independence which they had no intention of granting. The whole campaign was a lie that he couldn't stand, hoping the Turks would kill him. Here is the dramatised self-importance of the fantasist. But if someone as widely admired as Lawrence could make such an accusation in a famous book, who were Arabs to think otherwise?  Lawrence's legacy is that millions in the Middle East are convinced that British perfidy and conspiracy betrayed them, and they accordingly hate the British.  Conversely, the British are expected to feel nothing but guilt about their dealings with Arabs. It is hard to think of anyone who did more damage to the long-term reputation and standing of Britain.

There is more. Lawrence treated the divide between Sunni and Shia as if it hardly mattered. To the end of his life, Lawrence liked to boast that his great achievement was to have installed Faisal, a Sunni, as king of Iraq. The Shia warned that they would revolt, and it cost thousands of lives and millions of pounds to crush them. Not in the least grateful, Faisal immediately began scheming against the British. Lawrence's infatuation with this smooth deceiver laid a lasting foundation for Sunni tyranny in Iraq which lasted until Saddam Hussein.