Experts
Robert Lacey
Author, "The Kingdom"
Journalist Robert Lacey returns to one of his most famous subjects, Elizabeth II; he discusses her unique contributions to the monarchy, the future of British royals, and why a queen is worth a pint of milk a year. Read More
Robert Lacey explains what you need to know about Saudi banks, why you should check out Saudi McDonald's tell you everything you need to know about the culture, and why Arabia was the birthplace of tourism. Read More
A conversation with the author of "Inside the Kingdom". Read More
Saudi Arabia is flush with oil wealth but rooted in a strict religious tradition partially responsible for a small extremist subculture that produced most of the 9/11 terrorists. Given this environment, Saudi King Abdullah must maintain a delicate balance between tradition and modernity in order to grow the economy and prevent religious violence: here's how he's tried to do it. Read More
Robert Lacey explains why aspiring journalists should follow their passion and ignore naysayers. Read More
Robert Lacey always tends to fall out of favor with the subjects of his interviews and profiles, but he regards it as a necessary evil of the job. Read More
According to Robert Lacey, the everyday Saudi doesn't care much at all about the Western world, let alone their home country's inclusion in the G20. Read More
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently opened a major research university, KAUST, with an endowment to rival Harvard's. Will it help lead Saudi Arabia to Western-style modernism? Read More
The author of one of the most quintessential texts on Saudi Arabia, The Kingdom, describes the region's clever method for warding off terrorists. Read More
About Robert Lacey
Robert Lacey is a British historian noted for his original research, which gets him close to - and often living alongside - his subjects. He is the author of numerous international bestsellers as well as the new release "Inside the Kingdom".
After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, Robert wrote Majesty, his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Published in 1977, Majesty remains acknowledged as the definitive study of British monarchy - a subject on which the author continues to write and lecture around the world, appearing regularly on ABC's Good Morning America and on CNN's Larry King Live.
The Kingdom, a study of Saudi Arabia published in 1981, is similarly acknowledged as required reading for businessmen, diplomats and students all over the world. To research The Kingdom, Robert and his wife Sandi took their family to live for eighteen months beside the Red Sea in Jeddah. Going out into the desert, this was when Robert earned his title as the "method actor" of contemporary biographers.
In March 1984 Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, to write Ford: the Men and the Machine, a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic which formed the basis for the TV mini-series of the same title, starring Cliff Robertson.
Robert's other books include biographies of the gangster Meyer Lansky, Princess Grace of Monaco and a study of Sotheby's auction house. He co- authored The Year 1000 - An Englishman's World, a description of life at the turn of the last millennium. In 2002, the Golden Jubilee Year of Queen Elizabeth II, he published Royal (Monarch in America), hailed by Andrew Roberts in London's Sunday Telegraph as "compulsively readable", and by Martin Amis in The New Yorker as "definitive".