FOREIGN Office officials reacted with fury to Margaret Thatcher’s insistence on placating the Saudi regime after Riyadh lodged a complaint over a report by the BBC, National Archives files show.

The row broke out in September 1983 when the BBC World Service reported that Iranian citizens on the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca had been mistreated and imprisoned by the Saudi authorities.

The Saudi Ministry of Information linked the report to the appointment of Stuart Young, who was Jewish, as the new BBC board of governors chair.

Then foreign secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe cabled the British embassy in Riyadh, saying: “The nonsense about Stuart Young needs to be knocked on the head in some way.”

But Thatcher’s private secretary John Coles wrote: “We are disturbed at this misreporting of this incident and that we are sorry that it occurred.”