Robert Lacey

I lived in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s. It was, for a Westerner, pretty idyllic. There were the religious police; there…

— Robert Lacey

“MODERN SAUDI HISTORY IN FIVE EASY LESSONS If you did not go hungry in the reign of King Abdul Aziz, you would…

— Robert Lacey

“Always in life carry this motto with you: When you lose your money, you lose nothing. When you lose your health, you…

— Robert Lacey

“on December 7, 2001, Osama announced that he was leaving. “He deserted us,” remembers Al-Hubayshi bitterly. “After five weeks his people came…

— Robert Lacey

The Billy Carter of the British monarchy.

— Robert Lacey

“Compared by one commentator to “the death rattle of a seagull,” Costello’s voice was later said to have provided the model for…

— Robert Lacey

“There was no law that explicitly banned women from driving in Saudi Arabia. There is none today—the Kingdom’s notorious female driving ban…

— Robert Lacey

“Of all the varieties of modern pollution, noise is the most insidious.”

— Robert Lacey

“We were not willing to be the tool of a foreign government,” remembers Sheikh Hassan today. “There were a number of people…

— Robert Lacey

“What, they had asked Meyer, did he do for a living? “Business,” he replied. “What kind of business?” came the question. “My…

— Robert Lacey

Fear generates anger, and fear generates violence, and those were part of what built the Saudi state.

— Robert Lacey

“The challenge of carving an honest and accurate accounting out of the hidden casino syndicates of Las Vegas in the early 1960s…

— Robert Lacey

“Whoever wins society will win this war.”says Prince Mohammed bin Nayef”

— Robert Lacey

It seems to me that Sotheby's is very much like the British monarchy: an old and apparently very venerable institution which is…

— Robert Lacey

“Better that anger should be directed into jihad abroad than into Iran-style revolution at home.”

— Robert Lacey

“If you see a poor man come into your majlis, try to speak to him before you speak to the other people,”…

— Robert Lacey

“If an election were held here tomorrow,” Fahd once confided to a colleague, “Bin Baz would beat us without even leaving his…

— Robert Lacey

“In fighting its war, the Ministry of the Interior has resorted to a novel tactic– marriage. No Saudi official will admit on…

— Robert Lacey

“The House of Saud had executed Juhayman. Now they were making his program government policy.”

— Robert Lacey

There is a convention that the principal heir should be kept away from real danger. As the 'spare' rather than the heir,…

— Robert Lacey

“So Meyer Lansky was Hyman Roth? Was Marlon Brando Frank Costello? The confusion was compounded when quite serious newspapers started incorporating Godfather…

— Robert Lacey

Saud bin Abd al-Aziz was the moon-faced, shortsighted, bespectacled son of the old founder of Saudi Arabia, who'd always been his father's…

— Robert Lacey

It's true; I'm fascinated by elite groups.

— Robert Lacey

My whole life as a grammar-school boy, getting to Cambridge University and working on the 'London Sunday Times' has been very aspirational.

— Robert Lacey

“When Winston Churchill wanted to rally the nation in 1940, it was to Anglo-Saxon that he turned: "We shall fight on the…

— Robert Lacey