TWO YEARS’ CHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 October 1940, Page 6

TWO YEARS’ CHIPPING

EFFIGY OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Eric Kennington, the English artist and sculptor, has been chipping a twoton block of stone for four years. When it was placed recently in the little Dorsetshire church at Wareham, there was revealed the recumbent effigy of Kennington’s friend. Lawrence of Arabia. Lying on a base of stone, Kennington's monument is in the form of a Crusader’s tomb, of which one may see examples—Crusader in full battledress, favourite hound, doughty lance — in many a quiet English church. Lawrence lies, not in Crusading armour, but in the battle-dress of the modern Arab. Perhaps Kennington saw Lawrence as a twentieth century Crusader. Undoubtedly he remembered Lawrence's interest in the holy warriors of the Middle Ages. It was in 1910 that Lawrence made a tour through Syria on foot, studying the magnificent crusade architecture which holds history in its walls. It is interesting, at the moment, to recall two facts about Lawrence. One is that at the outbreak of the war in 1914, he was not accepted for the Army because he. was under standard height; the other is that it was Mr Churchill who called Lawrence to the Foreign Office in 1921 as adviser on Arab affairs and who. therefore, had a share in making Feisal King of Iraq.