EXPERTS claim to have solved the mystery of payments by Lawrence of Arabia to a woman in Newark while away from his West Dorset home.

New documents released by the Public Records Office showed that Lawrence paid money to Ruby Bryant in Nottinghamshire and to a London tax collector, William James Ross.

Lawrence aficionados speculated that he enjoyed secret trysts with Ruby Bryant and treated her while stationed with the RAF in Lincolnshire.

But his biographers today scorned the idea by claiming the war hero paid her money to rent a room to write his classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom book.

Biographer Philip Knightley said: "Lawrence was a writer first and foremost. You can't write a book and keep a manuscript in a barrack room.

"He frequently rented rooms to store his notes and textbooks."

He added: "Lawrence reckoned he could get all his writing material in the pannier of his motorcycle so he could just roar off to his bolt hole."

The Public Records Office documents showed how Lawrence paid Ruby Bryant two shillings a day while he was at RAF Cranwell in 1925 to 1926.

Some commentators speculated that he had secretly married an American nurse of the same name, but US historians have disputed this.

Lawrence made the payments after secretly enlisting in the RAF as a Leading Aircraftman under the name of TE Shaw.

Biographers claim he used the rooms at Mrs Bryant's Nottinghamshire home to write the Seven Pillars of Wisdom and that he often rented rooms while with the Royal Tank Corp at Bovington.

The classic book told of how Lawrence led an Arab revolt against the Turkish Empire during the First World War.

The documents released by the Public Records Office include a letter by Mrs Bryant to the Air Ministry complaining that the money had not arrived.

The payments ended in 1926 when Lawrence left Cranwell to join a troop ship headed for India. But at the same time he ordered money to be sent to tax collector and assessor William James Ross in Westminster.

Experts say these payments were to cover unpaid taxes from Lawrence's other earnings, such as his annual £200 stipend from Oxford University.