Bin Laden grew up during the 1960s and 1970s in Jidda, a port on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, 30 miles from Mecca. Brian Fyfield-Shayler, a British citizen, lived in Saudi Arabia and taught English to a number of the Bin Laden boys: All the sons are very good-looking. I don’t think that I have ever met any ugly Bin Ladens. Osama’s mother, I am told, was a great beauty. Since his father never had more than four wives at any one time he was constantly divorcing the third and the fourth and taking in new ones. This was an anachronism even in the 1950s and 1960s.

Osama was one of 30 students. He [used to sit] two-thirds of the way back on the window side that looked out onto sports fields and playing grounds. He was literally outstanding because he was taller than his contemporaries, and so he was very noticeable. His English was not amazing. He was not one of the great brains of that class.

It was big news, national news, when [Osama’s father] was killed [in a plane crash in 1967]. And for the next year at least the future of the business [hung in the balance]. There were a lot of projects that were not completed, and it was the major construction company of Saudi Arabia, so it was of huge importance, and there was probably only Salem [Osama’s oldest brother] and three or four brothers at that period who were of an age even to take on the mantle.

Salem was educated at Millfield [a boarding school in England]. Salem was a fraction younger than me, but not much. I was introduced to him by mutual friends. He was very westernised. His English was beautiful; it was very fluent, very characterful.

A relative of the Bin Laden family: Salem was a unique individual by any standard. By Saudi standards he was off the charts. Very charismatic, amusing, no facial hair. He played guitar — Sixties hits such as Where Have All the Flowers Gone?.

He acted as sort of a court jester to King Fahd and was part of Fahd’s inner circle. One time he buzzed the king’s camp in the desert with one of his planes, which went down badly, but he was always taken back into the fold. Salem took control of the business beginning in 1973–4. If Fahd wanted a palace built, Salem would build it for him.

Christina Akerblad, former owner of the Hotel Astoria in Falun, Sweden, recalls how in 1970 Salem and Osama paid a visit: They came with a big Rolls-Royce, and it was forbidden to park the car outside the building in this street. But they did it, and [my husband and I] said to them, “You have to pay [a fine] for every day and every hour you are staying outside this hotel,” but they said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter — it’s so funny to go to the police station and to talk with the police. We will stay where we are.” They had so much money they didn’t know how much they had. I asked them how they had managed to come to Sweden with this enormous Rolls-Royce. They said, “We have our plane.”

They stayed one week. They were dressed very exclusive. They had two double rooms. They slept in one bed and on the other bed they had their bags. On Sunday, I had no cleaner at the hotel, so I took care of the room myself, and I was shocked because in the big bag they had lots of white, expensive shirts from Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. When they had [worn] the shirt once, they dropped it. So the cleaner had taken these shirts to wash them, but they said, “No, we are just using them once, so you can [have] them if you want.”

Khaled Batarfi, three years younger than Bin Laden, met him when Osama was in his teens and they lived next door to each other in Jidda: I was the soccer captain even though Osama was older than me. Because he was tall, he used to play forward to use his head and put in the goals. I was a tough guy then and Osama was the peaceful one. He was very shy, very observant. He liked western movies, and he liked karate movies. Bruce Lee. He liked to go climbing mountains in the area between Syria and Turkey. He loved horse riding.

He would fast every Monday and Thursday. [Such] fasting is an extra thing, it’s what the Prophet used to do, but you don’t have to do it. [Osama’s mother, Alia Ghanem, a Syrian] is a moderate Muslim. She watches TV. She [has] never been very conservative, and her [current] husband’s like that; their kids are like that.

So Osama was different, but in a quiet way. He would bother his brothers sometimes for looking at the maid or things like that. Of course, he woke them for prayers in the morning, and that was good — nobody complained. But sometimes he was kind of upset if something is not done in an Islamic way. “Don’t wear short sleeves, don’t do this, don’t do that.”

At 17 he married his cousin in Latakia [in Syria] — a beautiful resort, I hear — the daughter of his uncle, the brother of his mother. And then he went to the university and I saw less of him.