every family has a black sheep, and this is a large family of around 5,000 people'. While Buschow had advised Thomas on the making of the film, she later told the Associated Press that it should not have been made, adding that 'it achieved nothing but discord. the audience, foolishly believing it to be authentic, is conned. Rumour and opinion somehow came to be presented as fact. No real effort was made to check up on such information. The 'revelation' of the domestic lives of the Saudi princesses-man-hunting in the desert, rendezvous in boutiques-was taken entirely on the evidence of an expatriate divorcГ©e, as was the story of the princess first seeing her lover on Saudi television. With the exception of Barry Millner, who had already sold his story to the Daily Express, Rosemary Buschow, and the Palestinian family in Beirut, every interview and every character in the film is fabricated. It quoted a letter to the New Statesman by Penelope Mortimer, who had worked with Thomas on the film: On, Mobil Oil placed an advertisement in The New York Times and other newspapers condemning the film, which it described as 'a new fairy tale'. Similarly, the US government received enormous political pressure from Saudi Arabia to censor its broadcast. British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington found the film 'deeply offensive', he 'wished it had never been shown', but 'to ban a film because we do not like it or even because it hurts our friends' was not an option for the country's government. While the Saudi response had initially driven a UK press reaction against the attempted censorship, when export orders began to be cancelled, the press began to question whether it had been right to show the film. Saudi Arabia, along with Lebanon, banned British Airways' Concorde from its airspace, making its flights between London and Singapore unprofitable. The British ambassador to Riyadh, James Craig, was asked to leave the country, while restrictions were placed on the issuing of visas to British businessmen. We have been asked to point out that equality for all before the law is regarded as paramount in the Moslem world. The programme you are about to see is a dramatized reconstruction of certain events which took place in the Arab world between 19. While resisting pressure not to show the film, ATV agreed to include an introductory comment that said: Controversy ДЄ critically acclaimed film shown on ITV in the United Kingdom on 9 April 1980, it provoked an angry response from the Saudi government. Thomas later explained that he had only reconstructed scenes where he was confident that they did happen, although he included film of interviewees telling him information which he did not believe.

The name of the princess was never said.Дeath of a Princess depicts Thomas' focus on 'the Princess', as her story became his vehicle through which important facets of Islamic culture in Saudi Arabia were revealed, including traditions and customs as well as gender roles and sexuality. The fictitious nation in which the drama was set was called 'Arabia', which some viewers took to mean Saudi Arabia. There was only one exception, an Arab family who played themselves. The character of Elsa Gruber, played by Judy Parfitt, was based on Rosemarie Buschow, a German woman who had worked for the Saudi Royal Family as a nanny.

The identities of the interviewees were obscured, and the actors chosen to replace them were based only loosely on their subjects. Thomas himself was played by Paul Freeman under the name 'Christopher Ryder'. Because of the candid and sometimes critical nature of the interviews, Thomas and ATV executives decided not to make the film as a straight documentary but instead to dramatise it with actors. The film was based on numerous interviews by journalist Antony Thomas, who, upon first hearing the story, grew passionately curious about its veracity, soon drawing upon contacts in the Arab world for their insights and opinions.

The diarie of a princess