It is almost never critical. Based on the conveyance of noncontentious factual matter and avoidance of matter that might develop into major diplomatic incidents, the newspaper has established itself as a reliable observer rather than a radical tub-thumper. The “Green Truth,” as the Arab News is locally known, is no Red Top tabloid.

The tone of future relations between Saudi Arabia and the UK were established when the Kingdom was found. The founding of Arab News — its first issue that came out on Sunday, April 20, 1975 — saw the UK featuring once again, although in a slightly less noble way. The first story that involved the UK in the newspaper that was to set the standard for English language papers in the region involved the “British Disease” — football violence.

What was particularly significant about the story that reported clashes between Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea fans was the reporting style. Associated Press (AP) supplied the story without any apparent comment or alteration. “Totthiz keeper Pat Jennings scuffled with a fan,” said the Arab News. That was in the days of hot lead typesetting when proofreading was done backward, at speed and from lead type ready to roll the print.

The technology has changed; the reliance on external sources around the world to supply a spread of news that caters for a general readership and expatriate workers in the Kingdom continues. The Arab News’ first editorial mentioned, “The paper will aim to provide both national and international news and to present its readers, Saudis and others, with a true and objective coverage of what is happening in the Kingdom.”

For very many years, the Arab News simply did what its first editorial set out. The UK, which was at that time some way down the list of trade partners behind the Americans, the Germans and the French, was reported on factually on subjects relating to sport, the economy and trade.

Visits to the Kingdom by trade missions were faithfully logged and money matters attentively reported. “Sterling Crisis in the Offing,” said the front page on April 23, 1975. Many of that decade’s headlines would sit happily in today’s edition.

The nearest thing to negative social comment on the UK at that time was a report about “Five Million Illiterate Britons” that was based on a survey by the University of Reading.

However, the first inklings of a relationship that was to bloom over the years appeared in the same issue. “Charming Blue-eyed Grocer’s Daughter May Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister” -- a prophetic headline if ever there was one. That year saw what the Arab News described as “A Hot Political Summer for Britain” and it was much exercised, producing a two-page feature on the internal politicking of the Wilson government. With an inflation rate of over 21 percent per annum, there was plenty to focus their minds, particularly the effect of inflation on the price of UK exports to the Kingdom.

Once again, with uncanny prescience, the Arab News said in a report on the “yes” vote for Britain to join the then Common Market: “Fearful that Britain would become just another state in a federal union, politicians like Enoch Powell campaigned with blazing earnestness for a ‘no’ vote.” The recent passing of the Lisbon Treaty has in effect finally removed British sovereignty and the proposed renaming of the English Channel by Brussels’ bureaucrats to the geographically incorrect “Anglo-French Pond” sets the seal on the deal.

The “blue eyed grocer’s daughter” became something of a heroine in 1982 — and indeed, for some years after that — when she sent UK forces to the Falkland Islands to eject Argentinean forces. Having opined in April that “Thatcher’s future rests on the Falklands” and commissioned a cartoon of a scruffy British lion with a smooth Galtieri placing his head in its mouth, Arab News reported the conflict in its usual unemotional tones, heavily reliant on wire services but willing to slip the odd piece of grit into the bland fare from official sources.

A decade after our first edition, a new correspondent had appeared on the scene, Mushtak Parker. After a decade’s reliance on wire reports supplied by AP and Reuters, Arab News had a man on the ground and the tone of reports changed. “Britain’s Afro-Caribbean community … is facing an uphill struggle to find its place in this supposedly multiracial society,” he wrote on Oct. 20 1985. Gone were the dry aseptic tones of AP and in came the correspondent with attitude; Arab News had shifted its stance and, outside the daily editorial, finally had an opinion.

However, the main trend of reporting selected news stories from the UK continued. The IRA bombing of the London Stock Exchange in July 1990 made the front page and so did the arrest of two British girls in Thailand for drug smuggling. The UK was just part of the international mix. A hint to develop cultural ties came in the same month with a spread about a film on the Kingdom’s natural history that was made by businessman Muhammed Al-Idrisi and shown in London.

Aug. 2 1990 saw Iraq invade Kuwait. Coalition forces, including the UK, became front-page news over the next few months as operation Desert Storm built. With a stream of threats from Saddam Hussein, the profile of the UK and the US rose. Troop build-up and some details of deployment became front-page news on an almost daily basis from September onwards.

By November, retaliation on Iraq was looming and President Bush was rattling his sabre at Saddam Hussein. The British, however, were squabbling over who should lead the Conservative party as Margaret Thatcher seemed to be on the way out. As the only post-WWII prime minister to go to war, she had the stomach for it and this seemed no time to be sidetracked by internal politics. Arab News paid close attention.

Over the last 10 years, the trend of reporting the Saudi-UK relationship has continued in much the same vein. Ambassadorial pronouncements were interspersed with a raising of the British Council’s profile as it actively promoted the benefits of a UK education. It responded to the pressure of demand from the rapidly increasing Saudi population that saw an overseas education as a positive boost to its career prospects at home and abroad.

In general, the relationship between the two Kingdoms and the reporting on it has been rather formal. Over 35 years, the relationship has moved away from political and diplomatic issues as Saudi Arabia, boosted by increasing oil revenues, expanded its infrastructure and flexed its local political muscle. The relationship has passed the military phase of the 1990s to one presently based heavily on trade and education.

Then there is of course Queen Elizabeth. Of interest to the small British expatriate community in the Kingdom, the Queen’s more significant doings have throughout the history of the Arab News always been a source of news.