Dubai Festival of Literature: Robert Lacey – Inside the Kingdom

'Great to be here in the "sink of sin", as we see it in Saudi Arabia,' says Lacey, aiming his laser penlight at Doha instead of Dubai. It is not, perhaps, the most auspicious of starts, but the remainder of Lacey's talk is an enthralling canter through the modern history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its 'two enormous resources' of oil (in the east) and holy places (in the west).

We are given a brief introduction to Mohammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab ('servant of God the Giver' and founder of the strict Wahhabi sect - whom Lacey describes as an Islamic Luther or Calvin), before picking up the narrative proper in the early twentieth century, when the Persian Gulf was a 'British lake' vital to the security of India, but the scattered tribes in the interior of the Arabian peninsula were slowly being conquered and unified under the charismatic Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of the House of Saud. Lacey's talk is accompanied by a series of slides, amongst which is a magnificent archive photo (taken by William Shakespear, British Agent in Kuwait) of ibn Saud's militia on camelback, galloping under a green standard emblazoned with the shahadah (Islamic proclamation of faith) – similar to the flag of Saudi Arabia today.

The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US is tracked from the grant of the oil concessions in the 1930s and the production of first oil in 1938, through the Arab oil embargo and the oil boom of the 1970s, to 9/11 and beyond. The giant oil concessions went to the Americans as opposed to the British in part through the 'treachery' of Harry St John Philby, an English adviser to ibd Saud who was in the pay of the Americans, and in part through ibn Saud's own (mistaken) belief that the Americans, being a long way away from the Middle East, were less likely than the British to meddle in Saudi affairs. The boom years of the 1970s had a complex effect, leading to a rising fear of Arab wealth in the west ('just six hours' pumping, and the Arabs could buy up Buckingham Palace; give them another day, and they'll buy up half the City of London') and a religious reaction at home, as a deeply conservative populace searched the fundamentals of their faith to cope with change.

Today, Lacey views the House of Saud as being in a 'paradoxical' position, demonised as a 'repressive clique of old men' by the west, while being criticised for its 'modernising' and 'progressive' stance at home. He leaves us with an intriguing thought: was 9/11 the dawn of a Saudi glastnost – an event which finally brought home the need for change within the Kingdom? If so, where will it end? With the collapse, as in the former Soviet Union, of the old regime which tried to reform itself, or with a modern state like Qatar or the UAE?