In 1981, two books on Saudi Arabia were published within days of each other: The House of Saud by David Holden and Richard Johns and The Kingdom by Robert Lacey.
If the first had the faint air of the Financial Times and the second the hothouse scent of Town & Country, they nevertheless advanced our knowledge of Saudi Arabia and its ruling house by a distance. At a time when the very institution of monarchy in the Middle East seemed doomed by the fall of the Shah of Iran, neither book was ready to write off the Al Saud (‘the clan of Saud’).
If both books are now dated, it is for the same two reasons. There was next to nothing in either about Saudi women, immured away from Western eyes by jealous families and Wahhabi custom, and not nearly enough about religion.
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