Speed freak

Clouds Hill, Colonel T.E. Lawrence’s former Dorset pied-à-terre, comprises four cramped rooms — two up, two down — and you have to mind your head as you go up the stairs. At the top of the stairs is a cell-like bunkroom, lined from top to bottom with aluminium. The wooden ship’s bunk would only be remotely comfortable to a man of Lawrence’s height, which was 5’5″. Daylight comes in via a first world war battle cruiser’s porthole, fitted by Lawrence just days before he was catapaulted from his Brough Superior motor-bike and fatally injured.

A theory on a website for sado-masochists I’ve visited, one of many theories surrounding this refreshingly complex individual, states that Lawrence was often confined here before being summoned to the music room and assiduously thrashed. Whether an aluminium-lined bunkroom was an essential part or not, his keen participation in an elaborate sado-masochistic punishment ritual is well documented.