LAWRENCE OF ARABIA -- A Biographical Enquiry

London: Collins. Near Fine in Very Good- dust jacket. 1955. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 448 pages; Contents clean and secure in original black cloth binding with bright gilt lettering at spine in dustjacket with shallow chipping along edges and split at front flap fold. With an Introductory Letter to Alister Kershaw. This biography, published twenty years after Lawrence's death, caused a storm because it revealed Lawrence's illegitimacy and his tendency towards self-aggrandisement. The friends of Lawrence, of whom there were many, rallied to his defence and were more than eager to express their anger. The Introductory Letter here is to Alister Kershaw, the friend who was the one who suggested this biography. Aldington lived another seven years after the book appeared, but they were plagued by the loss of his reputation and the decline of his health. Towards the end, Kershaw bought a house at Sury-en-Vaux, France (near Sancerre), for him to live in and where he died in 1962. Not marked as such, but from the collection of Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (1916 - 2000), the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. He was a career intelligence officer who served in the Office of Strategic Services and was the mastermind of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Ajax, which orchestrated the coup against Iran's democratically-elected Mohammed Mossadegh administration, and returned Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to Iran's Peacock Throne in August 1953 for the purpose of returning Western control of Middle Eastern oil supplies. In Egypt under Allen Dulles, Kim Roosevelt supervised the CIA's operation to undermine the popular General Neguib and encourage the rise to power of Gamul Abdul Nasser. Even before his decisive victory, Nasser was communicating through Roosevelt to make a settlement with Great Britain. These back channel negotiations eventually produced the treaty signed in October 1954. Nasser ascended and for the next decade Egypt's relations with the West moved along a sometimes rocky road. By 1965 relations had significantly deteriorated and Nasser was quite worried the CIA was plotting to assassinate him. After the Odell-Amin case broke, the CIA began to look for "more West friendly" Egyptian elements. Their attention landed on the Muslim Brotherhood, which according to Talcott Seelye, "We thought of Islam as a counterweight to communism. We saw it as a moderate force, and a positive one." In fact the CIA was spending millions of dollars on anti-Nasser operations, including an extensive propaganda campaign. .