T. E. Lawrence to W. M. M. Hurley

Cattewater
Plymouth

1.4.29.

[24 lines omitted] Cattewater is a quietly decent station: rather new, but it feels promising. I've become unluckily by clicking Fire Picquet over the Easter holiday - There isn't anyone in the R.A.F. who does as much holiday duty as I do. That is the firm conviction of at least half the airmen enlisted!

It is quaint your being at Amman. Difficult flying: the hardest, I think, there is. That Jordan valley is a terror in Summer and the Palestine 'dromes are not too good.

Peake is a very good fellow. He has stuck splendidly to three or four thankless jobs, and made a deal out of them. A hot, impatient, soul, too.

I enclose you some sample pages of Joyce's latest (not yet ready for publication in book form) and remarks by A.E. Joyce and his poetry. This is the colony of dispossessed English and American and Irish writers living rather intensely in one another's cheap lodgings in Paris and writing desperately hard. I fancy, for myself, that they are rather out of touch with reality; by reality I mean shops like Selfridges, and motor busses, and the Daily Express. At least there is a hot-house flavour about their work, which makes me wonder if it's a wholesome day-to-day good. Remarkable, certainly, but a bit funny. However people who do not practise writing aren't really qualified to judge of it.

Yours sincerely

T.E. Shaw.