Garden pursuits

The woman hired by the National Trust to see that nothing is pilfered from the upper floor at Clouds Hill, and to answer the visitors’ questions, knew almost nothing, she told me, about Colonel T.E. Lawrence, whose house it was from 1923 until he died as a result of a motorbike accident in May 1935. She was new to the job, she said. It was only her second shift. But she’d recognised already that for many visitors Clouds Hill was a shrine, and for their sakes she was determined to become as knowledgeable about Lawrence as possible.

She and I were alone in the simply furnished room. It was more or less as Lawrence left it on the day he kick-started his Brough Superior and rode off to send a telegram to Henry Williamson inviting him to Clouds Hill to discuss Williamson’s suggestion that Lawrence become actively involved in the British Union of Fascists.