Bahrain is a tiny (30 x 10 miles) teardrop-shaped island in the Arabian Gulf, linked to Saudi Arabia by a 15-mile causeway. The emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, rules over a population of 600,000, one third of which is Bahraini; the rest are non-Bahraini Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Americans, Chinese, Australians and Europeans - 700 of whom are Irish.

In 1932, Bahrain was the first country in the Gulf to discover oil, which brought untold wealth to an impoverished region, changing the life of the desert bedouin. It also ended Bahrain's economic reliance on pearling, an industry that had flourished for five thousand years.

Although a Muslim nation, Bahrain is the most religiously tolerant of the Gulf States, and Catholics, Protestants, evangelists, Hindus and Jews have places of worship. It is also the only Gulf state with walk-in alcohol shops, and women don't need to shroud themselves in black.