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But Saudi Arabia is surprising in a lot of ways. Like any place, or any people, it relentlessly defies easy categorization.

Most of the suicide hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a place not lacking in wealth. But due to rapid population growth, the wealth per capita has fallen by about half in a generation.

Traditionally, all the kings of Saudi Arabia have been sons of the founder of Saudi Arabia, and they've gone from one son to the next.

Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It's beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran.

Saudi Arabia was, until just a few years ago, probably one of the most safe countries on earth. And now the paper is daily full of activities and shootouts between Islamists who supported Osama bin Laden and the government there.

The Saudi government uses a lot of British equipment to suppress their own people. But we're happy for our politicians to go on advertising trips to Saudi, selling our weapons at the trade conventions.

I'm telling you, you can't compare Saudi Arabia to other countries.

We've had Saudis and Jordanians and Pakistanis who have - and Syrians - who have been involved in armed attacks against coalition forces in Iraq.

A first difficulty of the Arab movement was to say who the Arabs were. Being a manufactured people, their name had been changing in sense slowly year by year. Once it meant an Arabian. There was a country called Arabia; but this was nothing to the point.

Saudi Arabia has also changed. People today are connecting with each other all across the world through small gadgets and television. It's a different society.