T.E. Lawrence and His Brough Superior Motorcycles
"A skittish motorbike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness." — T.E. Lawrence
Most people know Thomas Edward Lawrence through the legend of Lawrence of Arabia: the British officer in Arab dress, the desert war against the Ottoman Empire, and the 1962 film starring Peter O’Toole. Motorcyclists know another side of him. After the war, Lawrence’s private life became closely tied to Brough Superior motorcycles, a run of machines he named, rode hard, wrote about, and carried into one of the most influential helmet-safety stories in vintage motorcycle history.
Lawrence of Arabia and the Motorcycle Legend
Lawrence lived from 1888 to 1935. He was born Thomas Edward Chapman, later raised under the surname Lawrence, became known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, and served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army during the First World War. His fame came from the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918, when he worked with Arab forces fighting Ottoman Turkish rule and became one of the most recognizable British figures to come out of the Middle Eastern campaign.
The public image is part history and part legend. Lawrence was an archaeologist, intelligence officer, writer, soldier, and later a man who repeatedly tried to disappear into ordinary service life. His own writing in Seven Pillars of Wisdom helped shape that reputation, and the later film made his motorcycle crash part of the opening scene for millions of people who had never heard of a Brough Superior.
From the Arab Revolt to Postwar Fame
Before the war, Lawrence studied history at Oxford and worked as an archaeologist in the Middle East. That background gave him language skills, regional knowledge, and a comfort with desert travel that made him valuable when the war reached the Ottoman Empire. In late 1916 he was sent to advise Prince Feisal’s forces, and over the next two years he helped organize irregular attacks, railway raids, and desert movements that supported the broader Allied campaign.
Lawrence’s motorcycle story belongs to the years after the fighting. After the war he argued for Arab independence, served briefly in government, and then tried to leave fame behind. He enlisted under assumed names in the Royal Air Force and the Tank Corps, eventually becoming T.E. Shaw. Clouds Hill, his cottage in Dorset, became the center of that later life.
Boanerges: Lawrence’s Brough Superiors
Lawrence was an avid motorcyclist, and his brand of choice was Brough Superior. He owned seven Brough Superiors during his life and gave them a shared nickname: Boanerges, a biblical name meaning “sons of thunder.” He also named the motorcycles George I through George VII. George VIII was reportedly being built at the factory at the time of his death.
Those names fit the machines. Lawrence did not treat the Broughs as casual transportation. He wrote about the sensation of speed with the same intensity he brought to desert travel, and he clearly saw the motorcycle as something more than a vehicle. To him, a fast motorcycle extended the rider’s body and senses. That is what gives the opening quote its force: the machine was not just faster than a horse; it offered a different kind of control, risk, and temptation.
The SS100 and George Brough’s 100-MPH Reputation
The Brough Superior SS100 was one of the fastest and most prestigious motorcycles of its day. George Brough, the company’s founder, personally tested the motorcycles, and SS100 models were tested to at least 100 miles per hour. That performance was extraordinary for the period and helps explain why Lawrence was drawn to the marque.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a genuine 100-mph motorcycle was not just fast on paper. Roads were rough, brakes and tires were limited by modern standards, and protective equipment was minimal. A Brough Superior offered speed, smoothness, and mechanical refinement, but riding one hard still demanded judgment. The 100-mph claim becomes even more striking when set beside Harley-Davidson’s first factory-backed land-speed record in 1937, when a purpose-built machine on smooth sand could just reach over 136 mph. Lawrence understood that tension between speed and risk, and seemed attracted to it.
Clouds Hill, George VII, and the 1935 Crash
The timing of the crash was stark. Lawrence retired from the RAF in February 1935. On May 13, 1935, while riding his Brough Superior near Clouds Hill, he swerved to avoid two boys, was thrown from the motorcycle, and suffered a severe head injury. He never regained consciousness and died six days later, on May 19, 1935.
That was the wreck shown at the beginning of Lawrence of Arabia, though the real story is more direct and more human than the film legend. The motorcycle was George VII, the last of the Brough Superiors Lawrence actually rode. The accident came so soon after his retirement that it gave his public story a final, almost cinematic shape, but the consequences reached beyond Lawrence’s own fame.
Hugh Cairns and the Helmet Safety Legacy
Dr. Hugh Cairns, the neurosurgeon who attended Lawrence after the crash, began studying motorcycle-related head injuries in the years that followed. Lawrence’s death did not instantly create the modern motorcycle helmet, but it helped push serious medical attention toward the problem of unprotected riders and fatal head trauma.
More than ninety years after Lawrence’s death, motorcycle helmets have evolved from the leather and flying-style caps many riders once wore mainly for warmth and comfort into highly engineered safety equipment. Cairns’s work was one step in that long shift, linking Lawrence’s fatal crash to the broader move toward modern motorcycle helmet use.
The Surviving Motorcycle and Lawrence’s Legacy
George VII, the Brough Superior associated with Lawrence’s fatal crash, has been preserved and is associated with the Imperial War Museum. Its survival gives the story a physical anchor: not just a quote, a film scene, or a famous name, but an actual motorcycle tied to one of the best-known riders of the interwar years.
Lawrence remains a complicated historical figure, but the motorcycle side of his life is direct. He loved fast machines, understood their pull, and wrote about riding with rare intensity. His Brough Superiors were part of his postwar identity, and the crash at Clouds Hill helped change the way doctors, soldiers, and eventually everyday riders thought about head protection.