Years ago I read The Sev­en Pil­lars of Wis­dom, the remark­able account, by T E Lawrence, of his expe­ri­ences while serv­ing as a liai­son offi­cer with rebel forces dur­ing the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks between 1916 and 1918. It’s a rol­lick­ing, rip-roar­ing tale, to say the least, replete with desert skir­mish­es, blow­ing up of trains and high-octane adven­ture but also much psy­cho­log­i­cal strug­gle, with Lawrence hav­ing to ame­lio­rate frac­tious trib­al enmi­ties in order to unite the Arabs against the com­mon ene­my. Then there is Lawrence’s own emo­tion­al tur­moil in bal­anc­ing his divid­ed alle­giance between the British Army, and its ulti­mate inter­ests, and his new-found com­rades with­in the desert tribes. The sto­ry was clear­ly ripe for an epic film to be made about it.

Suit­able, then, that cin­e­mat­ic heavy­weights Sam Spiegel and David Lean would be involved in the 1962 film ver­sion of these events,  Lawrence of Ara­bia, and an array of big-name, depend­able act­ing tal­ents: Peter O’Toole (in the title role, of course), Alec Guin­ness, Jack Hawkins, Antho­ny Quinn, Omar Sharif, Antho­ny Quayle, Claude Rains (along­side sev­er­al hun­dred extras). Actu­al­ly, Peter O’Toole hadn’t been the first choice for Lawrence: Albert Finney had been cast but was fired after two days for unknown rea­sons; Mar­lon Bran­do, too, had been offered the role; and both Antho­ny Perkins and Mont­gomery Clift were con­sid­ered. How­ev­er, O’Toole’s screen test and per­haps his resem­blance to the real-life Lawrence edged it for him. With his blond hair and pierc­ing eyes, he cer­tain­ly looked good on screen: Noël Cow­ard quipped: “if you’d been any pret­ti­er, the film would have been called Flo­rence of Ara­bia”.

The movie was helped tremen­dous­ly by the com­bi­na­tion of Super Panav­i­sion 70 cin­e­matog­ra­phy with the incred­i­ble back­drops afford­ed by the deserts of Jor­dan, along with a suit­ably majes­tic score by Mau­rice Jarre. It won sev­en Oscars, and is recog­nised as one of the great­est and most influ­en­tial films in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. Let’s take a look at Lawrence enter­ing the desert for the first time…