SAUDI ARABIA: Tragic Princess

It was a story worthy of the thousand and one Arabian nights, and the British press played it with grisly gusto. ROYAL FAMILY KILL PRINCESS WHO ELOPED was the headline in the Observer, which spurred competing papers into ferreting out the lurid details. According to first reports, the tragic story involved a Saudi Arabian princess called Misha who married a commoner, thereby incurring the wrath of her princely grandfather; she was shot and her husband beheaded. Leading the Fleet Street pack was the Daily Express, which published some blurry pictures that purported to...