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T.E. Lawrence’s golden dagger, made for him in Mecca in 1917. He sold it to Lionel Curtis in October 1923 for £125. The money was put towards repairing the roof of Clouds Hill (his cottage) and purchasing furniture. The dagger is now on display in the Imperial War Museum in London, England. 3 YEARS AGO   S

The dagger handed to Lawrence of Arabia after the capture of Aqaba, and made famous by actor  Omar Sharif  on the big screen, is to be sold at auction. The dagger, the only one of Lawrence's three Arabian blades known to survive in private hands, is to be sold by Christie's for an estimated £90,000. The sale will take place just days after the   death of Sharif, aged 83, was announced .  The actor played Sherif Ali in the film of Lawrence of Arabia, assisting Peter O'Toole in the capture of Aqaba before presenting the dagger. The ornate silver-gilt mounted Arab Jambiya dagger In reality, the ornate dagger was given to T E Lawrence by Sherif Nasir, a real-life Arab leader who attacked Aqaba, and on whom the fictional Sherif Ali was partly based. The dagger, described as a silver-gilt with curved blade, 30cm-long, was left in the keeping of Lady Kathleen Scott, widow of Scott of the Antarctic and later Lady Kennet, who sculpted Lawrence in Februar...

Harris Tweed: Weaving a brighter future By Douglas Fraser Business and economy editor, Scotland 8 June 2013   From the section Scotland business Jump media player Media player help Out of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue. Media caption The fashionable rise of Harris tweed One of the bigger problems in trying to sell Harris Tweed is that it is so durable. Once a chap's got one jacket, he's unlikely ever to need a replacement. And that factor is what nearly made the industry itself much less durable than its own output. Five years after it came close to a sales meltdown, it's back and growing. Between 2009 and last year, production more than doubled - from 450,000 metres of cloth to more than one million. That is the highest output for 17 years. There is still a long way to go before returning to the seven million metre high point in 1966. Brian Wilson, the former Labour government minister who is closely involved wi...

London's Most Unusual Pub Interiors SHARE Below, we've rounded up a few of the more oddball pub interiors around town. We've left out glorious traditional spaces like the Princess Louise or Palm Tree in favour of true originals with one-off peculiarities. Impressive pub conversions like The Counting House and Tooting Tram & Social will be covered in another article. 1. The Windsor Castle, Marylebone The name hints at royalist tendencies. The  mannequin sentry , standing guard outside, suggests a certain eccentricity. But step inside the Windsor Castle and you are confronted by a right royal onslaught. The Queen and her blue-blooded relatives are everywhere, glowering down from photographs, etchings, ornaments and crockery, as though the bar manager wanted to put the 'publican' back into 'anti-republican'. Any gaps in this august clutter are taken by framed photos of sporting heroes, or fading stars of the screen. Turn...

Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill BY JOHANN HARI     Thursday 28 October 2010 12K PRINT A   A   A Winston Churchill is rightly remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour – but what if he also led the country through her most shameful hour? What if, in addition to rousing a nation to save the world from the Nazis, he fought for a raw white supremacism and a concentration camp network of his own? This question burns through Richard Toye's new history, Churchill's Empire, and is even seeping into the Oval Office. George W Bush left a bust of Churchill near his desk in the White House, in an attempt to associate himself with the war leader's heroic stand against fascism. Barack Obama had it returned to Britain. It's not hard to guess why: his Kenyan grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was imprisoned without trial...