Lawrence After Arabia (1992) – Nostalgia Central

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In 1962, David Lean had a limitless budget, eighteen months and locations such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Spain, Morocco and London to recreate the exotic world of soldier/adventurer TE Lawrence, as played by Peter O’Toole

For this Emmy-award-winning two-hour made-for-TV drama – a “sort of sequel” starring Ralph Fiennes – they had the equivalent of small change.

The film had been conceived as a three-million-pound French/British co-production to be shot in Paris and London.

Then the French money fell apart, and the production had to be reconceived as a relatively low-budget piece, with most of the filming done at Sands Film Studios in Rotherhithe, where sets were constructed for interior rooms at Versailles, the Crillon Hotel, the War Office etc.

Location shooting was limited to places like the Bluebell line (to shoot period trains and train stations in UK and France), but to recreate the footage Lowell Thomas had shot of Lawrence in the desert in the 1962 motion picture, the producers hired camels from Chipperfield’s circus and filmed in a quarry off the M25 in Kent that had previously been used for Doctor Who episodes, shooting black and white footage on an authentic period hand-cranked camera.

They eventually ended up doing half the shots with Ralph Fiennes sitting on a stepladder, pretending to ride, as the camels were so difficult to control.

The producers made the mistake of telling a journalist how clever they had been filming in a quarry, and a double-page spread appeared in the Daily Mirror on 18 April 1992 with the headline, “Lawrence rides again (in Sevenoaks!)” and the subtitle, “Now movie legend’s a cut-price star of the Home Counties”.

The film, made for Anglia Television, is a dramatised account of how Lawrence, a British Army officer, fought for Arab independence at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

But Lawrence and his friend Prince Feisal became disillusioned with the conference when they confronted opponents more lethal and deceitful than they had encountered in the desert.

TE Lawrence
Ralph Fiennes
Prince Feisal
Alexander Siddig (as Siddig El Fadil)
Lord Curzon
Denis Quilley
Lord Dyson
Nicholas Jones
Valence
Roger Hammond
Maitland
Peter Copley
Dumont
Paul Freeman
Mme. Dumont
Polly Walker
Gertrude Bell
Gillian Barge
Meinertzhagen
Jim Carter
Winston Churchill
Michael Cochrane
Wilson
Robert Arden
Clemenceau
Arnold Diamond
Lloyd George
Bernard Lloyd
Fleischmann
Keith Edwards
Chauvel
Ray Edwards
Lowell Thomas
Adam Henderson
Hejeris
Antony Zaki (as Tariq Alibai)
Spratt
Nicolas Tennant
Prince
Mark Spalding
Lawrence’s Mother
Merelina Kendall
Mrs Wilson
Ann Rich
Churchill’s Secretary
Charles Rogers
Major Domo
Horacio Malviccino (as Alain Debray)