The road from Damascus

Wafic Said is an exotic import, but a friend of Britain for 50 years. He has given roughly £100 million to philanthropic causes in this country, including founding and funding the Said Business School at Oxford. He also helped Britain secure with Saudi Arabia, Al-Yamamah, the biggest defence agreement in our history, which was signed in 1985. For this, he has repeatedly been called an arms dealer in the press. (As a result, he even got a letter from people who wanted to sell him a second-hand tank.) A reticent man, he said nothing at the time, but now regrets it. ‘I was promoting Britain. I should have challenged it when it came. If you don’t, it sticks,’ he says. Today, with his philanthropic projects here coming to fruition, he wants to talk.

The 72-year-old man who receives me in his enormous Belgravia flat looks younger than his age, but old-fashioned in appearance.