On a bright spring day in 2014 Suhoud al-Sharif strolled down the high street in Camden, north London, wearing a white hoodie and skinny jeans. A friend filmed her as she stopped and chatted to a couple of buskers, looked across the Regent’s Canal and smiled at the camera, her long black hair blowing in the breeze.
The film student, then 21, had been living in west London for three years with two of her siblings and her mother, Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the youngest daughter of Saudi Arabia’s second monarch, King Saud. The princess, a glamorous businesswoman who owned two upmarket London cafés, was also known for advocating reform. Suhoud worshipped her.
“Success for me is first making my mum
