But for many centuries British monarchs have also celebrated an official birthday in the summer. As many of you who have visited the UK will know, we have some remarkable weather, and the summer offers the best chance of ensuring that Her Majesty’s birthday can be celebrated under clement skies.

It is right to mention Her Majesty, not just because it is her official birthday we are celebrating, but because of her historic interest in, and relationship with, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The queen succeeded her father as monarch in 1952, while King Abdulaziz Al Saud was still alive and has known all five Saudi kings since that time: King Saud, King Faisal, King Khaled, King Fahd, and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. She is the personification of relationship between our two countries and her contribution to the strength of that relationship is something all of us are very grateful for.

But I want to take the opportunity of Her Majesty’s birthday to celebrate the links, not between kings and queens, prime ministers and governments, but between all of you — the teachers teaching English at Saudi universities, the business people winning contracts through hard work and high quality; the Saudi students sitting summer exams in the UK, the pilgrims traveling from Leeds and Lancaster to Makkah and Madinah. All of you are ambassadors. These links are not new. I am often reminded of the British men and women who traveled to the Kingdom in the first half of the 20th century, meeting King Abdulaziz, traveling amongst the tribes of the Empty Quarter and recording something of the unique culture they found here. In my office in the embassy I have a photo of Prince Faisal bin Abdulaziz when he first visited London in 1926.

But what has happened in, say, the last 20 years has been the unprecedented expansion of the individual links between our two Kingdoms. Perhaps the most notable area has been in business. Most of the 20,000 British people currently living in the Kingdom work for British companies doing business here.

From the companies in the Eastern Province, providing world class industrial products to Saudi industry, to the logistic companies in the Hijaz working to develop the ports springing up along the coast, to the financial services companies in Riyadh, British businesses are here, and here to stay.

On the Saudi side, companies and individuals own £60 billion worth of assets in the UK. It is a business relationship which delivers for both countries. So as we celebrate HM Queen Elizabeth’s official birthday, I want to pay tribute to the hard work and shared values of the British and Saudi citizens who make the relationship what it is.

From the travels of Abdullah Philby and Capt. Shakespear, to the British Muslims on Umrah today, and on toward the future, with initiatives like our new UK in Saudi Arabia Facebook page, I feel confident in the breadth and depth of the relationship between our two countries. There is a lot to be proud of.