Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.

Richard Holmes, the military historian, claimed on Radio 5 Live today that a printout of this epigram by T.E. Lawrence hangs on the wall of the British Army HQ in Basra.