A trail of blue smoke tomorrow will trace the course of one of the odder triangular relationships in literary history - between George Bernard Shaw, Lawrence of Arabia, and a classic British motorbike.
A cavalcade of members of the Brough Superior Owners Club, riding hugely valuable museum pieces - each worth between the price of a small house, and the price of a very large house - will make the 150-mile journey from Clouds Hill in Dorset, home of T E Lawrence, to Shaw's Corner at Ayot Saint Lawrence, Shaw's hideous home in Hertfordshire. It was a trip Lawrence made hundreds of times on his Brough Superior, before dying in a crash on one in 1935.
The rally this year commemorates the 50th anniversary of Shaw's death in the house, in November 1950, after he fell out of an apple tree at the age of 94.
On the surface, the grumpy pacifist iconoclast had little in common with the war hero author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom - apart from a weakness for inordinately long prefaces. In fact, the two men became firm friends.
Lawrence was so in awe of Shaw that he only agreed to visit his house with a friend on the assurance that the great man was away. Shaw was home, and the men took an instant liking to one another, which surprised both of them.
Shaw called him "a very strange fellow, a born actor and up to all sorts of tricks". The rally is due to arrive at Shaw's Corner, now owned by the National Trust, at 4pm, and the bikes will remain on display at the house until 6pm.
Lawrence was a dashing motor cyclist, covering thousands of miles on a succession of Brough Superiors. Shaw, safer on his bicycle with the specially lengthened frame to fit his spindleshanks, was the terror of the village on his two stroke, frequently colliding with stationary objects or falling off.
The Brough Superiors were hand built in Nottingham between 1921 and 1939 when the family firm closed. Their slogan was "the Rolls Royce of motor-cycles". Only 3,000 were built, of which an estimated 1,000 survive. Rally organiser Justin Wand will be riding his 1926 Brough SS100: "It was designed in 1925 and guaranteed to have a top speed of 100 mph, an absolute phenomenom at a time when most cars pootled along at about 35 mph."
The most valuable ever sold is the missing link in tomorrow's parade. Lawrence owned seven of the motorbikes in all. The one which was a present from Shaw and his wife was sold in the US for almost $4m.
