After the publication of ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ in 1926 Lawrence suddenly moved back to the RAF and a posting in India – close to the Afghan border – where he seems to have spent most of his time ( if you believe the majority of biographies) listening to recordings of classical music, and writing letters. But there has always been speculation that he was carrying out some kind of intelligence work across the border in Afghanistan – always denied by the Air Ministry of course – which is not so far fetched when we realise that the area, then as now, was extremely volatile, especially with the fledgling USSR flexing its muscles. And Lawrence would have been very useful in dealing with local tribal leaders ( he could speak some of their dialects) and organising guerilla fighters to help create something of a buffer zone between the USSR and British India. But the British press soon found Lawrence, who was immediately – and in great secrecy – transferred back to England.

In early1927, and due to a huge amount of interest in the privately printed edition of Seven Pillars, Lawrence was quickly persuaded ( he needed the money) to write, for Jonathan Cape, an abridged version called, ‘Revolt in the Desert’, which went on to become a best seller and further muddy the Lawrentian waters, and, due to a much higher celebrity profile, make it easier for him to operate as an intelligence agent.

The year 1927 also saw Cape publish Robert Graves’ biography of Lawrence, ‘Lawrence and the Arabs’, which became another best seller, and a book that immediately drew the interest of the British film industry.

Early in 1929, and again in great secrecy, Lawrence was transferred to the flying boat station at Cattewater, Plymouth, Devon, where, having struck up a close friendship with his CO ( how many rankers can do that ?), Wing Commander Sydney Smith, he was put in charge of the development of the high speed rescue launches ( Lawrence had been riding and rebuilding high speed motorcycles for some years and loved speed) that not only proved invaluable in saving many RAF lives during WWII but may also have been instrumental in helping the Royal Navy develop further its secret MTB ( Motor Torpedo Boat) programme.

Birth and Death

Lawrence was born illegitimately in Tremadoc, North Wales, on the 16th of August 1888 (his birth certificate states the 15th, but his mother always claimed it was the 16th) in a small, grey stone house that is today a visitor hostel.

Lawrence’s father was Sir Thomas Chapman, and his mother, Sarah Junner was the family housekeeper at the Chapman home in County Westmeath, Ireland.

Sarah was Sir Thomas Chapman’s mistress, and a young woman with an iron will (she was known as Miss Lawrence by the staff in the Chapman household, and someone to be obeyed), and was born (also illegitimately) of a Norwegian father, John Junner, and a Scottish mother, Elizabeth Junner, in Sunderland in 1861. The couple were cousins, and the sharing of a common surname helped prevent any local scandal. After the death of her alcoholic mother, Sarah, at the age of nine, was brought up by her strict Episcopalian grandparents in Perthshire, and at their death by an aunt who was married to a very dour Episcopalian minister. It was while the minister and his wife were based in Skye that Sarah, in 1879, began to work for the Chapman family.

Lawrence’s father, Thomas Robert Chapman, was born in 1846 and came from a family that had become wealthy landowners in Tudor Leicestershire. With the Elizabethan colonisation of Ireland, the Chapman family – with a little help from Sir Walter Ralegh – were bequeathed a large estate to the west of Dublin. In 1873 Chapman married his cousin, Elizabeth Hamilton Boyd (the daughter of a neighbouring landowner), who, in nine years, bore Chapman four daughters. Between pregnancies she went around the countryside preaching about the evils of sex and drink to anyone unlucky enough to encounter her.

When Sarah discovered she was pregnant Chapman took the opportunity to leave his wife, and the couple, now calling themselves Mr and Mrs Lawrence, fled to North Wales. A couple of weeks after Lawrence’s birth they  moved to Kirkcudbright in Scotland, then to Dinard on the Normandy coast, then back to England, and the New Forest before, finally, in 1896, settling in Oxford.

Thomas Edward Lawrence (the eldest of five brothers) was educated at Oxford High School. In 1907 he was awarded a Meyricke Exhibition – a Welsh scholarship worth £40 a year – to Jesus College, Oxford, to read Modern History. A year later the 20 year old ‘Ned’ Lawrence joined the OUOTC ( Oxford University Officer Training Corps) where he underwent a two year training course that is considered by many to have been equal to, if not better than, the rigorous standards of Sandhurst.

The rest of course is history.

When the 47 year old T. E. Lawrence died at Bovington Military Hospital on May 19th 1935 many secrets died with him, not least a convincing explanation of his motorcycle ‘accident’ six days earlier on the road between Bovington Army Camp and his cottage, ‘Clouds Hill’.

Corporal Ernest Catchpole, of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, based at Bovington, had been out walking his dog when he witnessed the crash and, when giving evidence at the inquest, stated that he had seen a black car travelling in the opposite direction to Lawrence moments before the crash.

” The motorcycle passed the car all right. Then I saw the motorcycle swerve across the road to avoid two pedal cyclists coming from Bovington. It [the motorcycle] swerved immediately after it had passed the car. I ran to the scene and found the motorcyclist on the road. His face was covered with blood.”

Catchpole then flagged down an army lorry, helped to get the fatally injured Lawrence into the back, and then accompanied the driver back to Bovington Camp.

As soon as Lawrence was admitted to the military hospital Special Branch police officers (and where did they suddenly come from?) guarded the inconscious Lawrence. Catchpole, and every other soldier on the camp, was ordered not to talk about the incident, and although Lawrence was now technically a civilian ( he’d retired from the RAF in February 1935) the Air Ministry became involved within minutes of the incident, and stated to the press that “…there had been no witnesses to the crash.” The following day the Daily Mirror reported that Lawrence’s cottage was heavily guarded “…to safeguard vital Air Ministry documents which Mr Shaw had in his possession.”

The two boy cyclists, Frank Fletcher and Albert Hargreaves, had been interrogated by both the military and civilian police immediately after the crash and stated very firmly at the inquest ( too firmly according to one of Lawrence’s biographers) that they had never seen a black car at the vicinity of the crash. Hargreaves and Fletcher never once changed their story about not seeing the car. Corporal Catchpole – who sadly shot himself a few years later – never changed his story either.

It has been suggested that Lawrence was murdered. Fanciful? Well, maybe, but not that fanciful when we consider that Lawrence was a very experienced motorcyclist, and unless the black car, or its occupants, had made Lawrence suddenly swerve – and a bullet to the head would do just that – why should he crash trying to avoid two boys, who were, according to the inquest, cycling in single file on an open road? And as the inquest also discovered, Lawrence was only travelling at 38 miles an hour at the time of the crash.

Did Lawrence commit suicide in 1935? Unlikely, but an idea given some credence when, in 2001, a cache of letters cam to light that suggested Lawrence was depressed at the time and that maybe the crash was suicide, but that would totally discount the contrary evidence given by Catchpole, and the two boys, and there can be no doubt that had Lawrence wanted to have committed suicide he would have chosen a much cleaner and solitary method.

By all contemporary accounts Lawrence was, on Monday the 13th May 1935, in high spirits and eager to get to Bovington Camp and telegraph his old friend, the novelist Henry Williamson – author of Tarka the Otter – to confirm a lunch appointment for the following day. Lawrence had also received an invitation from Lady Astor asking him to visit Cliveden to meet Stanley Baldwin who, she felt – and she knew most things – wanted Lawrence to help re-organise Britain’s defence systems. Lawrence refused the invitation saying he was busy and just wanted to stay at Clouds Hill where he now felt content. Whether he was suffering from depression or not ( a common ailment with survivors of the First World War anyway) he was still in demand and leading a full life – including taking on increasing amounts of translation work – and keen to see what his new SS100 Brough Superior motorcycle (a gift from GBS) could do on the deserted Dorset roads.

And why was Lawrence so keen, on that May Monday, to meet Henry Williamson for lunch the following day? Although a fine novelist Williamson had become disillusioned with politics by his own horrific experiences of the First World War and was now (much to Lawrence’s disgust) a leading member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Fascist Party (BFP), and an open supporter of Hitler. Williamson wanted Lawrence to join the BFP and help Mosley gain power. Lawrence was no fascist, or Nazi, having shunned an advance in 1932 from Hitler’s foreign affairs representative, Kurt von Ludecke, to show open support for Hitler. Lawrence had put Williamson off several times in the recent past but here he was suddenly encouraging the novelist to come to lunch. It is therefore entirely conceivable that Lawrence had been instructed to infiltrate the BFP and that Williamson was his way in. As a consequence of this assumption (there is no proof, as yet) the mysterious black car which didn’t stop (and why should Catchpole make up the sighting?) could easily have belonged to Special Branch (which would certainly account for them getting to Lawrence’s bedside as quickly as they did), who may have been there as a result of a tip-off by the SIS – as extra cover for Lawrence – saying that the hero of Arabia was indeed intending to join the BFP, and become a threat to national security. Double bluff? It would also explain why Lawrence refused the invitation to meet Baldwin; he was distancing himself before taking on one of the biggest and most dangerous jobs of his secret intelligence career; it is therefore just conceivable that Special Branch killed Lawrence, or that some dreadful accident involving their car took place. It would also account for the two boys being threatened into silence for the rest of their lives. At the beginning of the 21st century we are more aware than ever of the dirty goings on of the intelligence services, was it so different in the 1930s?

Lawrence was a spy to the end.