Lawrence of Arabia & the Light Horse

The Australian War Memorial Museum has started a blog to inform folks about their forthcoming exhibition concerning T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and the Australian Light Horse in Palestine in 1917-1918. The exhibition will open in December 2007 in Canberra and run over the summer of 2007-08. I for one will be visiting that exhibition, sitting as I am in Jeddah, the Bride of the Red Sea, at the moment.

The focus of the exhibition (and therefore the blog I guess) is the operations involving Lawrence and the Arab Revolt in the desert plus, of course, the Australian Light Horse.

The blog is at http://blog.awm.gov.au/lawrence/?page_id=2 and the museum is

interested in hearing from Australians (or anyone else) who have verifiable stories or memorabilia relevant to the exhibition, particularly relating to connections between Lawrence and Australians in Palestine.

The blog will contain some information about how the exhibition is being put together and whilst comment will be invited, the Museum will moderate comment and will not engage in long arguments about historical interpretations etc. Of course, from that point of view, the Museum has missed the whole point of sticking something in the Blogosphere – it is to, amongst other things, invite comment and debate. Still, it is a nice idea to try and be interactive with a blog.