On Thursday 16 April 2026 at 12pm, John Alexander will consider Lawrence of Arabia's service at Miranshah. This lecture will be hosted virtually via Crowdcast and livestreamed from the RAF Museum's Midlands site.

John Alexander’s lecture examines Lawrence’s service on India’s North West Frontier as Aircraftman First Class T. E. Shaw in 1928. As the lecture highlights, Lawrence’s time with the detached flight at Miranshah, one of the RAF’s smallest and most isolated posts, is largely overlooked in the Lawrence literature, although it is the only time he served on operations. This lecture provides fresh insights of Lawrence’s service at Miranshah by drawing on the Lawrence biographies, other memoirs, and Lawrence’s correspondence, as well as archival research of Indian Government official histories and intelligence reports, surviving RAF operational records, British and Pakistani Frontier Scout histories, British sound archives, the author’s research on the RAF’s organizational culture and air/land operations of the time, and his own RAF service in Pakistan. The lecture considers Lawrence’s understanding of India and the RAF’s role when he volunteered for service in India and at Miranshah, and his experience serving there, culminating in operations against two troublesome Mashud sects. The lecture highlights Lawrence’s central role as the detachment clerk, his relations with the detachment officers and airmen, and provides insights into the RAF’s role in supporting the Waziristan political agent and Tochi Scouts.

John Alexander is researching a PhD by publication on the development of British joint air-land operational art. As an RAF officer, he practised air-land operations in the Falklands in 1982 and subsequently with airborne and commando forces, in Oman, as a Chief Air in a NATO corps headquarters, and in various Middle Eastern campaigns. He has conceptualised warfare, including joint operational doctrine, for the UK MOD, the RAF, Director Special Forces and NATO, and led the observer/trainer team for UK and JEF joint collective training. Latterly he headed the UK’s joint operational headquarters force development and force preparation branch at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (UK). Twice a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow, he has degrees from Newcastle, the Open (twice), Cambridge, and Pakistan National Defence universities, and was a visiting research fellow at Oxford’s Changing Character of War programme. He has published in Air and Space Power Review, Asian Affairs, the RUSI Journal, and the Journals of the T.E. Lawrence Society and RAF Historical Society, editing the latter two, and co-edited Close Air Support: Case Studies on the Integration of Air Power on the Battlefield (Helion, 2024).

Lunchtime Lecture (Midlands): ‘The Edge of the World’: Lawrence of Arabia’s ‘idyllic’ service at Miranshah as Aircraftman First Class T. E. Shaw