Lawrence and his Brough Superior SS 100 vs. RAF Bristol fighter

Thomas Goisque is a photographer who embarked on a road trip that followed the route that the young Thomas Edward Lawrence took on a cycling tour of France, which Goisque later published in a book and documentary in 2020. Goisque organized a modern version of Lawrence’s race against a RAF Bristol fighter. The original race took place in Dorset in the early 1920s but Goisque chose the Margny-les-Compiègne airfield for the modern reenactment because Lawrence discovered medieval fortresses there in 1908 during his cycling tour of France.

On the day of the race, Thomas Goisque read a few sentences from Lawrence’s novel before the Stampe Biplane and the splendid modern Brough Superior SS 100 were unleashed on the runway:

"The bad ground was passed and on the new road our flight became birdlike. My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise, to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky. There the Bif was, two hundred yards and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not?"