Fakir Carmichael is modelled on soldier, scholar and Arabist T.E. Lawrence.
The Agatha Christie Collection No. 42, They Came to Baghdad
Agatha Christie’s light-hearted thriller They Came to Baghdad (1951) features a multilingual member of British intelligence, Henry ‘Fakir’ Carmichael, a character based on the real-life persona of the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935). The real-life hero turned down a recommendation for the Victoria Cross and the offer of a knighthood for his role as guerrilla leader of the Arab Revolt against Germany’s allies, the Turks, during the First World War. The ‘Uncrowned King of the Desert’ was a brilliant scholar, philosopher, archaeologist, linguist, author, diplomat and statesman who shunned fame and fortune to become an aircraft mechanic in what was a forlorn attempt to escape the charismatic image he had engendered as the world-renowned ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.
One of Lawrence’s ancestors was the cousin of Sir Walter Raleigh, a connection of which he was extremely proud. Therefore, it was fitting that in February 1929 Lawrence journeyed to the county of Raleigh’s birth to be stationed at RAF Mountbatten, Plymouth. In an effort to escape undue attention he had assumed the alias ‘Shaw’, in honour of one of his great friends, Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who introduced him to the vivacious Lady Nancy Astor. She was one of the most glamorous figures of the interwar period and had the distinction of being the first female to enter Parliament after women had been given their long overdue right to vote in 1918. She succeeded her husband, Waldorf, as member for Plymouth Sutton when he moved to the Lords, and continued to serve the city until she retired from politics in 1945.
Lawrence was asexual and a cynical woman-hater, but became an ardent admirer of American-born Nancy and her incredible zest for life. She was the only female allowed to ride pillion on his motorbike. The pair would often shoot off on his powerful 1,000cc Brough Superior for a high-speed ride around the city and boasted of reaching speeds of 90mph along Plymouth Embankment. In October 1930, Lawrence wrote to tell Nancy how he had overtaken a Bentley sports car ‘which only did 88’ on Salisbury Plain: ‘I wished I had had a peeress or two on my flapper bracket’.
Lawrence called his bike Boanerges (meaning ‘Sons of Thunder’, the name which Jesus gave to two of his disciples, James and John), but his love of speed was to cause his tragic death shortly after his discharge from the RAF in March 1935. Taking up residence at Cloud’s Hill, a rented cottage in Dorset, he found it difficult to face an uncertain future and friends became concerned as he had attempted suicide in the past. He wrote to Nancy:
I am so tired that it feels like heaven drawing near: only there are people who whisper that heaven will bore me. When they tell me that I almost wish I were dead for I have done everything in life except rest, and if rest is to prove no refuge, then what is left?
Lady Astor tried to cheer Lawrence with the promise of a forthcoming government post and invited him to her country house in Buckinghamshire: ‘I believe... you will be asked to help reorganise the Defence Forces. If you will come to Cliveden, the last Saturday in May... you will never regret it’.
Britain needed men of Lawrence’s calibre in preparing to counter the growing threat posed by Germany. On the 13 May Lawrence received a letter from the award-winning author of Tarka the Otter, Henry Williamson, based in Georgeham, North Devon, proposing a meeting at Cloud’s Hill to discuss the possibility of Lawrence holding talks with Adolf Hitler to try and secure a lasting peace in Europe. Williamson was a member of Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists and fervent admirer of the Fuhrer’s achievements. His collected novels, The Flax of Dream, contained the following dedication: ‘I salute the great man across the Rhine whose life symbol is a happy child’.
Lawrence agreed to receive Williamson and rode to the Post Office to send a telegram with the following directions: ‘Lunch Tuesday will find cottage one mile north of Bovington Camp SHAW’.
On his way back home he swerved his motorcycle to avoid two errand boys on bicycles, crashed and flew over the handlebars, receiving severe head injuries. Lawrence was taken to Bovington Military Hospital but never recovered consciousness and died six days later. The ghost of Lawrence wearing flowing, long Arab robes was soon spotted riding a motorbike by Cloud’s Hill. Chillingly, a year before his death, Lawrence had prophesised his demise in a letter to motorbike manufacturer George Brough: ‘It looks as though I might yet break my neck on a Brough Superior’.
Agatha Christie’s fictional hero, Fakir Carmichael, is killed while trying to relay plans to his supervisor about a secret weapon; likewise, following Lawrence’s death, rumours circulated that he had been murdered by foreign agents. Conversely, another story circulated that his death had been faked by the Secret Service to allow him to undertake espionage in the Middle East. Supporters of this theory believe he died in Morocco in 1968. In keeping with similar tales about heroic figures, including Francis Drake, Horatio Nelson and Lord Kitchener, there is also a legend that Lawrence has merely withdrawn into an Arthurian limbo from which he will emerge to save an imperilled nation.