Saudi Arabia is one of the most controversial and least known of the Arab nations. A land of massive contrasts - between its densely populated cities and its vast expanses of desert; between the recent poverty of its villages and the massive wealth created by oil, which is drawing a labour force from most of the neighbouring countries; between the aggressive technocratic and industrial thrust forward and the strongly traditionalist Islamic basis of the ruling ideologies - it has progressed to world prominence in a matter of years after centuries of little or no change. The change is not so muc.