Penguin Speakers Bureau

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.

After writing his first works of historical biography, Robert, Earl of Essex, and Sir Walter Raleigh, 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 of 1984, Robert Lacey took his family to live in Detroit, Michigan, so that he could write Ford: The Men and the Machine, a bestseller 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.”

Robert’s most recent book is titled Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia.

Learn more about this speaker

Robert Lacey Discusses Saudi Arabia
Bloomberg Television's In Business

Robert Lacey Interview
ABC's Good Morning America

"Has 9/11 Changed Saudi Arabia for the Better?"
The Daily Beast

"House of Saud"
PBS's Frontline

"Should We Be Kinder to Terrorists?"
PBS's NOW

Robert Lacey Interview
Bridges TV

Robert Lacey's Article Archive
The Daily Beast

Robert Lacey's Interview Archive
The Big Think