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Eleanor: You'd only just found Rosamund. Henry: Not her so damn particularly. I found other women. Eleanor: Countless. Others. Henry: What's your count?

+ Bonus

#what?? it's not meant to be a sequel to becket 1964 #I always thought it was #the lion in winter #becket #peter o'toole #love Henry's expression as though he just swallowed a fly

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"I want to stay here till it no longer hurts me: till the burnt child no longer feels the fire" Letters of T.E. Lawrence, p416

//"patronage of cooks, chefs, and comedians"💀💀

Today is St. Lawrence's day

"He had pity and mounted me behind him on his bony animal, to which I clung the rest of the way, learning the feelings of my adopted name-saint on his gridiron." from T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Saint Lawrence was one of the seven deacons of the city of Rome under Pope Sixtus II who were martyred in the persecution of the Christians that the Roman Emperor Valerian ordered in 258. As a form of torture Lawrence was placed on a great gridion, with hot coals beneath it. After the martyr had suffered pain for a long time, the legend concludes, he cheerfully declared: "I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!" From this, St. Lawrence derives his patronage of cooks, chefs, and comedians. He died at 10th August, he was 32 years old.

It's interesting that T.E.'s birthday are 5 days after the anniversary of St. Lawrence's death. Also the sense of humor and neglection of pain are things that they had in common.

painting by El Greco c. 1580

#t.e. lawrence #st. lawrence #the trick is not minding that it hurts #actually I haven't yet read the letters but a mutual shared this quote and I was reminded of this post about St. Lawrence immediately #I'm well done on the side Turn me over #idk how I shall react to this level of dark humour #quirky catholic saint

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If I may add, some unnamed yet praiseworthy horticulturists literally named a kind of hybrid rose after him:

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Romeo & Juliette, Act 2 Scene 2, William Shakespeare

My fellow T.E. Lawrence enthusiasts may be aware that since 1974, an unidentified American had ordered white roses to be delivered to Lawrence’s grave on his birthday, with the message “In memory of T.E.S., 2020 AD.” (That’s “T.E.S.” as in “T.E. Shaw,” the name he went by from 1923 until his death.) 

Each year, the number of roses decreased by one. In 1974 the roses numbered 46 (his age when he died), and so 2020 would have been the first year when no roses would be delivered.

I suspected, then, that something interesting might happen at his gravesite on August 16, 2020. I’ve been waiting for years to find out, and today the day arrived!

I am lucky enough to have a friend who lives about 30 minutes from Lawrence’s grave, so I called in a favor and had him drive out to take a look. 

He took these pictures, of an arrangement of 7 white roses with a card:

So, that’s the news, for anyone else wondering what might have happened today. Nothing monumental, but I do appreciate that people are still bringing him flowers – especially roses, as I would like to think that they are at least in part an homage to this passage from Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

…suddenly my camel tripped and went down emptily upon her face, as though pole-axed. I was torn completely from the saddle, sailed grandly through the air for a great distance, and landed with a crash which seemed to drive all the power and feeling out of me. I lay there, passively waiting for the Turks to kill me, continuing to hum over the verses of a half-forgotten poem, whose rhythm something, perhaps the prolonged stride of the camel, had brought back to my memory as we leaped down the hill-side:

For Lord I was free of all Thy flowers, but I chose the world’s sad roses, And that is why my feet are torn and mine eyes are blind with sweat.

While another part of my mind thought what a squashed thing I should look when all that cataract of men and camels had poured over.

After a long time I finished my poem, and no Turks came, and no camel trod on me…I sat up and saw the battle over, and our men driving together and cutting down the last remnants of the enemy. My camel’s body had lain behind me like a rock and divided the charge into two streams: and in the back of its skull was the heavy bullet of the fifth shot I fired.

#t.e. lawrence #world's best tribute #name of the rose #not by Umberto Eco #🎀｡ﾟ･｡ﾟᐠ( ᐢ ᵕ ᐢ )ᐟ｡ﾟ･｡ﾟ🎀

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So this happened recently…​​🛐ου φροντις🛐

#clouds hill #t.e. lawrence #i'm not crying you're crying #and those roses ;DDDD #the feminine urge to ask for a postcard but Im a coward #😭😭

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Also had dinner at this lovely spot…Where TE used to hang out for coffee when he was at Bovington…

#t.e. lawrence #shaw of dorset #anglebury house #crying screaming sliding down the wall #item added on my bucket list

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oh my fk hell TEL on a tarot card, thank you thank you thank you😭😭. It reminds me of Carl Jung's notion of "internal tarot" that a pre-programmed set of archetypes are imprinted in our collective unconsciousness. And the image of TEL, mediated by various myth-making films and novels etc., has become one of the archetypal characters of our time who "undergoes cyclical patterns of submersion, mythical death and regeneration." tbh personally I think probably "the chariot" and "the hermit" suit him better but I sure can see the point: "justice holds a two-edged sword". this is so good that I have this urge to have it printed and hung on my bedroom wall.

A little explanation: justice is the central arcana of Lawrence in the matrix, it seems to me that it suits him very well.

#art #illustration #t.e. lawrence #seven pillars of wisdom #tarot cards #justice tarot #sorry for my wandering imagination making unnecessary links between stuff #adhd is adhding #my gibberish

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Alec Guinness, Celia Johnson, and Yvonne De Carlo in THE CAPTAIN’S PARADISE (1953), directed by Anthony Kimmins

#celia johnson #and Alec Guinness??? #this is everything to me #young Alec with shining wavy pansy blonde hair

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Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad!

#wuthering heights

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#lawrence of arabia #peter o'toole #meme #if Peter O’Toole had been any prettier

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Audrey Hepburn signing autographs on the set of Sabrina, 1954

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John Mills as T.E. Lawrence in Terrence Rattigan’s Ross, 1961 Broadway Production.

Crazy that out of all those actors who had played Lawrence so far, Sir John Mills was the only short one (still significantly taller than TE tho). As a midget myself I strongly suggest we should normalise casting more short actors as Lawrence.

//Trivia: John Mills played major parts in 5 David Lean movies: In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), Great Expectations (1946), Hobson’s Choice (1954) and Ryan’s Daughter (1970), only one less than Alec Guinness.

#john mills #t.e. lawrence #Terrence Rattigan #Ross #stage play #broadway play #1961

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I just feel very sane

quote of the year

#taylor swift #the anthology

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Let's talk about Sir Alec Guinness and T.E. Lawrence

I can't help thinking that Alec Guinness should play the motorcycle scene in the LoA prologue. My reasons are as follows:

Peter O'Toole was apparently too young to play Shaw of Dorset while Sir Alec was 46 years old at that time, prime time for a motorcycle crash (sry).

Sir Alec shared a great deal in common with TEL. For starters, they were both born out of wedlock: TEL's parents, as widely known, could not be married and lived together under a pseudonym, while Alec Guinness never had the chance to know the true identity of his biological father. In his memoir "Blessings in Disguise", he said“My mother at the time was a Miss Agnes Cuffe; my father's name is left an intriguing, speculative blank."

They both had a pretty unstable, semi-nomadic early life: TEL 's family moved around to avoid acquaintances and didn't settle down until TEL was 7. Sir Alec was born to a similar confusion and "totally immersed in it for several years, owning three different names until the age of fourteen and living in about thirty different hotels, lodgings and flats, each of which was hailed as 'home'. Rings a bell?

They were both very much troubled by their ambivalent sexuality: TEL as asexual, romantically attracted to men and Sir Alec as bisexual who was allegedly arrested once due to homosexual acts

They had very similar personalities. Alan Bennet notes a number of things Sir Alec shared with TEL in his Forty Years On: "Shyness has always been a disease with him, and it was shyness and a longing for anonymity that made him disguise himself. Clad in the magnificent white robes of an Arab prince.... he hoped to pass unnoticed through London."

Before Rattigan's Ross, Alec Guinness had actually already played Michael Ransom (a role largely based on TEL) in Auden and Isherwood's The Ascent of F6 as early as 1939. According to O'Connor's 'Alec Guinness: the unknown, a life', he could easily impersonate Lawrence by the age of 25, "as if he was already second nature to him". And in 1952, he once again played a role inspired by TEL: Air-craftsman Peter Ross in Malta Story. //btw Auden's famous 'Funeral Blues' (Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.......) originally came from The Ascent of F6.

And then Ross in 1960, which was a hit. Sir Alec made a great deal of research for his role and had numerous interviews with TEL's friends. The results came out satisfactory: Herbert Wilcox went so far as to say that he went 18 times and "never lost the illusion that he was seeing and hearing Lawrence himself".

TEL had been the hero of Alec Guinness's heart since he was just a lonely kid in boarding school, as he confided in David Lean that he was "endlessly throwing a towel over my head and tying a tie around it and pretending to be Lawrence of Arabia."

Brown face sucks, Prince Feisal should be played by an Arab actor and Sir Alec should have played Shaw of Dorset.

Alec Guinness also had blue eyes. "His eyes were the colour of the Indian Ocean on a calm day", such is the description for Col. Nicholson in Pierre Boulle's novel Bridge on the River Kwai, I know I'm off topic but I like this sentence quite a lot.

Thank you for reading, that's all I want to say.

Alec Guinness as Peter Ross in Malta Story (1952)

Alec Guinness as T.E. Lawrence/J.H. Ross in Ross(1960) // but I think he looks very much like Hergé's Tintin in this photo

Alec Guinness as Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

#alec guinness #t.e. lawrence #lawrence of arabia #david lean #Terrence Rattigan #Ross #Malta Story #wh auden #Christofer Isherwood #the ascent of f6 #air-craftsman ross #shaw of Dorset

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Let’s play a game, I include Lawrence in a sentence, you guess who it refers to: DH, TE, or Jennifer.

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shoutout to girls whose pride and prejudice is lawrence of arabia

#I’m normal about the movie I swear #it’s just I’ve watched it 5 times since January and read 3 books about David Lean and 2 books about TEL #plus all 16 DL movies

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The Adventures of Tintin - The Crab with the Golden Claws (Herge - 1941)

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean - 1962)

#lawrence of arabia #adventures of tintin

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Sir Alec could have had better chance with this photo of him playing Henry II in 1937 instead of that dork Herbert Pocket (disclaimer: I love Herbert Pocket) Look at his eyelashes??! He’s so beautiful

Propaganda

James Edwards (The Manchurian Candidate, The Killing)—riveting/heartbreaking performance in 'The Manchurian Candidate'

Alec Guinness (Our Man in Havana, The Lavender Hill Mob)—look at him. look at this idiot picture i've submitted of him [above]. look at his dumb-ass little floofy cravat. he's perfect just perfect

This is round 1 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.

[propaganda photos submitted under the cut.]

#alec guinness #classic movies #great expectations #Henry the second #Shakespearean play