Retired from the RAF [Royal Air Force] at age 46, Lawrence settled into a cottage in Dorset, but the peace he’d felt in the military slipped away. While riding his motorcycle a few months later, Lawrence crested a hill and met two boys on bicycles. … Swerving to miss them, he crashed, fractured his skull, and died. Lawrence was, Winston Churchill assured a grieving Britain, ‘one of the greatest beings alive in our time.’

—From “Lawrence of Arabia: A Hero’s Journey,” January 1999, National Geographic magazine