Dreaming of Samarkand

by Martin Booth

Stationed in Lebanon, far from the London intellectual society to which he aspires, minor poet James Elroy Flecker falls in love with T.E. Lawrence, the spy he is assigned to control

Genres: Fiction

333 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Martin Booth was a prolific English novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Martin Booth's new novel describes the relationship between the poet James Elroy Flecker and T.E. Lawrence.

"The years immediately preceding the Great War saw the growth of espionage projects in the Middle East and the new M.I.5. Both Flecker and Lawrence were in the employ of D.G. Hogarth, the noted archaeologist and spy-master who recruited them from Oxford University. Lawrence was to become an international figure, a complex, ascetic and self-obsessed man. Flecker was donnish, the son of headmaster, aesthetic and bisexual.

"The two men shared their books and thoughts, and a love both spiritual and sexual grew between them. The story develops into one of deception, illness and death - the partly Jewish Flecker who aided the man who loved Arabs, the supposed enemy of Zion: the Englishman, Lawrence, who went native and supported the Arab cause - only to help bring about its downfall in the shape of the Balfour Deceleration years later." From the flyleaf of the 1989 Hardback edition from Hutchinson.

A really excellent novel from an author who seems to be forgotten (please see my footnote *1 Below). I must warn that when the publishers blurb above says:

'The story develops into one of deception, illness and death - the partly Jewish Flecker who aided the man who loved Arabs, the supposed enemy of Zion: the Englishman, Lawrence, who went native and supported the Arab cause - only to help bring about its downfall in the shape of the Balfour Deceleration years later.'

is not describing either the novel Booth wrote, or the historical Flecker or Lawrence. Flecker wasn't Jewish, unless you are going to use a Nazi definition of Jewishness and it is both wrong and ahistorical to read back into Lawrence's time the problems that developed post WWI (just type in T.E. Lawrence and Palestine into a search engine and learn something).

This is a brilliant evocation of the immediate pre-WWI literary world of London encountered through Flecker, one of the 'English Parnassian or Georgian' poets, and the work of Lawrence as archaeologist and spy in Ottoman Syria and how the two encountered each other and their complex working and emotional relationship. Clearly the novel is about Flecker but the Lawrence Booth creats in the novel is by far one of the best evocations of Lawrence I have read in fact or fiction. His portrayal of Flecker is, possibly, an even more brilliant act of literary legerdemain (see my footnote *2 below). Flecker is out of literature and history's second or even third division. His life intersects with those from the first division but he is very much a figure of his time and I fear his most famous and successful work the play 'Hassan: The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How he Came to Make the Golden Journey to Samarkand' would probably be regarded as orientalist and maybe even racist today but really it is most likely to sentimental and of its time, like Kipling's poetry, and suffers by association.

When Flecker died aged 30 of consumption the obituaries called it the greatest loss to English poetry since Shelley. But the problem was Flecker still wrote, or tried to write, like Shelley. Flecker was out of sympathy with poets like D. H. Lawrence or Rupert Brooke who were more engaged with the 'modern' world and was trapped in an 'art for art' sake aesthetic movement cul-de-sac

Martin Booth makes of Flecker a main character who sounds an absolute pain-in-the-arse. Self obsessed, self regarding and selfish who seems to believe that being a poet excused him from life's realities. He is a man who you can't stop reading about even though in many ways he is unlikable and this is a rare achievement in fiction. Even his relationship with Lawrence is complex and with incredibly subtlety Booth portrays their association/relationship as one of mutual admiration shot through with ambiguity. Flecker had sado-masochist tastes and strong homoerotic tastes, despite being married, and was drawn to Lawrence who in in the novel can be seen as using Flecker to get what he needs.

It is a wonderful novel and it is a convincing portrait of both Flecker and Lawrence. Martin Booth was an immensely talented writer and this is a novel well worth rediscovery.

*1 In the case of Martin Booth I can't resist pointing anyone interested in the direction of his Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_...) and his Guardian obituary (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004...)
*2 There is a very good biography of James Ellroy Flecker 'No Golden Journey' written by Flecker's nephew John Sherwood and published in 1973 and, although not credited by Booth, I am sure he must have used it.

[Moonlight · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Audacity this book have the way the main character was never satisfied in any way he hated the dessert of Lebanon and also the snow of Switzerland the way he treated his wife like he was just waiting for an offer from Lawerence to leave her ironically she was the only person to stand by his side. It looked like what he was doing was heroic while it was literally stealing for the British museum the way the writer viewed Arabs and muslims was so wrong and made no sense the writer didn’t even try to make his research about the culture or the history this book is my biggest mistake I wish I could give it a lower review