THIS INSTALLMENT HAS 3 STORIES. FIVE FATHOM RIP IS A FISHY TALE, MYSTERY OF THE MURDERED MISER IS A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD CLASSIC AND THE BUOY IS AN EXCELLENT GHOST STORY. I LOVE THIS WHOLE SERIES.

Behind David Lean's directorial masterpiece 'Lawrence of Arabia' (1962) lay a series of attempts to film T. E. Lawrence's life, most of them centred around the abridged version of 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom', known as 'Revolt in the Desert.' Chief amongst the filmmakers eager to produce this epic was the great Alexander Korda, who bought the rights to both books and also to several biographies that contained their material. Korda was asked by Lawrence himself not to make the film while he was alive. Five months later, Lawrence was killed in a motorbike accident and Korda began his preparations. Locations were scouted, scripts were drafted, and several actors were tested to play the lead. Walter Hudd (who had played the Lawrence-based character Private Meek in 'Too True to be Good') and Leslie Howard were the favourites, although Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier were also considered. The Foreign Office thwarted Korda at every turn, protesting that it would be ill advised to show the Turks in an unfavourable light with the ongoing political unrest in the East. After a dozen attempts to make the film, Korda let it slide. This book is tripartite: part one sketches a brief history of the attempts to film 'Lawrence of Arabia' and includes pictures of all the key players. The second part is an interview given by Leslie Howard on how he would play Lawrence; and thirdly, the final script (1938) of the Korda epic is reproduced. While it is a laudable piece of work, the book fails to hang together and emerges as two articles and a film script that are linked by the same subject, but have no cohesion. Part One is far too brief for the reader to gain an understanding of the forces arrayed against Korda and his project, and it would benefit from more research and more expansion on the views of the various directors and actors engaged for the film in its different stages. Part Two is simply the Howard interview with no editorial comment offered. Part Three, the script, also has no analysis. This is surprising, as it is rich in allusion and with peculiar sequences that (to modern eyes) detract from the overall pacing of the film. It relies heavily on 'Seven Pillars' for dialogue and description, with little or no modification. To those who are acquainted with the Robert Bolt script of the Lean film, the Korda Lawrence is but a pale shadow: eloquent passivity rather than "nothing is written" man of action; cold detachment rather than anger and angst in crucial scenes (Tafileh, the Turkish hospital); the smug imperialist rather than the tortured anti-imperialist. Korda's Lawrence was intended to be heroic, a ( ) puff-piece with a serious bite, but looking at the script today, he seems shallow, self-important and obnoxious. The real Lawrence evaded any attempt to capture him by constant shifts in personality, presenting a different face to each person he met. It would appear that the celluloid Lawrence of Korda's vision was the same; and, as such, defeated him wholly.