The Other Brother

T. E. Lawrence

Lawrence of Arabia, Thomas Edward Lawrence (known professionally as T.E.) had four brothers.  His youngest brother Arnold is probably the most well-known of these today.  He was a professor of archeology at Cambridge University and also inherited the enormous job of being T.E.’s literary executor. 

Two younger brothers, William and Frank, were to die in military service during WWI, the same war that brought Lawrence of Arabia to fame.  The other brother, the oldest of the siblings, was Montagu Robert who was known by his second name.

Robert had a substantial career and interesting life story of his own. He trained to become a doctor and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in World War I.

Robert was closest to his mother's own strongly-held Christian beliefs.  After the war he was motivated to become a medical missionary in China. He went twice to China, the first time with the China Inland Mission. These were long tours of duty in the country and included a period when he was in charge of a missionary hospital in Mienchu, Szechuan. Robert was accompanied by his mother on both occasions.

Later in his life he published family correspondence between the brothers in a book called The Home Letters of T.E. Lawrence and His Brothers. 

Arnold was known to feel that, despite his own accomplishments, he was always in the shadow of his famous brother.  This must have applied moreso to Robert as there is such little information about him in the public arena.  I thought that he deserved a more appropriate record than simply being 'the other brother', so I wrote the entry for him now in the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity.