Robert Lacey

Historian and biographer

Robert Lacey is a British historian known for his original research technique of cultural immersion. After studying at Selwyn College, Cambridge he began a career in journalism, writing for the Illustrated News and the Sunday Times. Having written biographies of Robert, Earl of Essex and Henry VIII he then published his pioneering biography of Queen Elizabeth II: Majesty (1977). He followed this up with biographies of figures as wide-ranging as Henry Ford and the gangster Meyer Lanksy. Lacey moved with his family to Detroit in order to research and write the work on Ford, and did the same when he wrote a history of Saudi Arabia, living in Jeddah for 18 months. The result was an international bestseller The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Saud (1981) which was subsequently banned in Saudi Arabia. He has updated this volume with Inside the Kingdom (2009).