Podcast with Eamonn Gearon, “The Arab Bureau”
Many of us have watched the classic 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia, the somewhat fictionalised work based on the life of T. E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt and the First World War. But Lawrence was part of the Arab Bureau, an effort to better understand and influence the region as Britain fought the Ottoman Empire for control of the Middle East. Chastened by their intelligence failures at Gallipoli and Kut al-Amara, the British tried to do something unthinkable: Actually learn how local communities operated, and ensure that propaganda was culturally authentic.
It’s the subject of The Arab Bureau: The Story of Britain’s Most Ingenious Intelligence Unit (Hurst, January 2026), a new book from Eamonn Gearon which he calls the first in-depth investigation into what this intelligence agency did.
The Arab Bureau was reviewed for the ARB by Francis P Sempa in March 2026. You can read his full review here.
Eamonn is a global historian, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa and the history of intelligence, whose books also include The Arab Revolt. His doctoral research uncovered previously unknown Arabic documents which shed new light on British intelligence work in the region.
