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The compass which helped to create the legend of Lawrence of Arabia, steering him across the desert on a camel during the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1916-18, has been sold for $494,146, together with a cheap watch and an inscribed cigarette case.
The startling price at the Christie’s auction in London — paid by an anonymous telephone bidder, vastly over a top pre-sale estimate of $30,000 — was testament to the world’s enduring fascination with a slight, awkward man, who died in a motorcycle crash in 1935, aged 46.
His immortality was ensured by his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, more often admired than read cover to cover, and by a film made long after his death by David Lean’s 1962 Lawrence of Arabia, with Peter O’Toole.
The Swiss-made brass compass was included, with the watch and cigarette case, in an exhibition last year at the Imperial War Museum in London.
The inscription in the case, which carries his own portrait, explains that they were given to his driver, Corporal Albert Richard Evans, after the Paris peace conference in 1919.
The watch was a cheap one bought in Paris, but the copper case, polished so that it shone like gold, attracted a thief in Syria who tried to rob Lawrence.
Nick Lambourn, Christie’s expert, said: “With Lawrence, as with Stanley or Captain Scott, these are often very idiosyncratic, eccentric figures — but they push the boundaries beyond what us mere mortals could ever achieve.”
— The Guardian
Maev Kennedy
