Here in London the Defence Ministry has released personal files on thousands of British officers who served in the First World War. Among them is the legendary T E Lawrence, who led an Arab irregular force against the Turkish Army in the territory which, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, eventually became the states of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The BBC's Rick Fountain has been reading the file at the Public Record Office and reports that the papers point to the probability that Colonel Lawrence was working for the British Secret Service:

Lawrence of Arabia, as London newspapers were quick to call him, was one of the most mysterious and glamorous figures of his time. His exploits in the Hejaz, posing as an Arab and leading a column of Arab fighters, involved much reckless courage and hardship as the force inflicted painful losses on the Turkish Army and accumulated intelligence information.

In the account he wrote later, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence wrote of his capture by the Turks, of their failure to recognise him, and his stunning escape. The War Office in London was gratified by the admiration he evoked but also embarrassed by his ambiguous role.

The files reveal that Lawrence, nominally a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army, somehow became answerable instead to the Foreign Office - which controls the Secret Intelligence Service - and was sent to Paris for the 1919 post-war peace conference. One memo to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff says the writer had tried again and again to get the Foreign Office to say whether Colonel Lawrence was their man or not.

A later message made clear that he was there as part of the Foreign Office delegation and surmised that he was also serving as plenipotentiary - minister with full powers - to represent the ruler of the Hejaz, the Hashemite Sherif Hussein.