Books: Tortured Hero

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: THE MAN AND THE MOTIVE (256 pp.)—Anthony Nutting—Clarkson N. Potter ($5).

No more romantic figure emerged from World War I than the shadowy desert raider in flowing white burnoose known as Lawrence of Arabia. Here was a pint-sized Oxford archaeologist who could outride the fiercest Bedouin warrior, a galloping ghost who had blown up 79 bridges along the Turkish-held Hejaz Railway (and mourned he had not made it 80), an Englishman hailed by the Arabs as El Aurens, who in 2½ years had led the revolt in the desert from the...

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