Lawrence of Arabia was invented in a theatre. In March 1919 an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, opened a travelogue in New York called "With Allenby in Palestine." Lawrence was a supporting act in it. The audience wanted the man in the headdress, so Thomas retitled the show "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" and took it to Covent Garden; more than three million people saw it between 1920 and 1924. That is years before Seven Pillars of Wisdom reached any readership and four decades before the film. The fame was built first; the books came afterwards. In August 1922 Lawrence enlisted in the RAF as an aircraftman under a false name.

W. Britain has him in the hybrid, which is the honest choice: British service dress and Sam Browne belt under an Arab keffiyeh and agal. Not the white robes of the film poster — an officer wearing enough of another man's clothes to be trusted, and not enough to be taken for one. Hands behind his back, on flagstones, doing nothing at all. There is no Ottoman-front company for him in the range, so he stands as a display figure rather than a diorama piece. For context: Kitchener met Faisal's brother Abdullah in Cairo in February 1914 and told him the Arabs of the Hejaz could expect nothing from Britain — then offered to guarantee their independence nine months later. Kaiser Wilhelm II is why the answer changed.

W. Britain model 10129. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single standing figure on a sculpted flagstone base. Boxed.