Christopher Colin MacLehose

CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

, Hon.

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the ...

(born 12 July 1940)Nicholas Wroe
"Christopher MacLehose: A life in publishing"
, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', 28 December 2012. is a British publisher notable as publisher of

Harvill Press Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, ...

(from 1984 to 2004), where his successes included bringing out the stories of

Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He published his first collection of stories, '' Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?'', in 1976. His breakout collection, '' What We Talk About ...

and

Richard Ford Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe. Ford's first collection of short stories, ''Rock Springs (short stories), Rock Springs ...

for the first time in Britain. Having published works translated from more than 34 languages, MacLehose has been referred to as "the champion of translated fiction" and as "British publishing's doyen of literature in translation". He is generally credited with introducing to an English-speaking readership the best-selling Swedish author

Stieg Larsson Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson (, ; 15 August 1954 – 9 November 2004) was a Swedish writer, journalist, and far-left activist. He is best known for writing the ''Millennium'' trilogy of crime novels, which were published posthumously, sta ...

and other prize-winning authors, among them Sergio De La Pava, who has described MacLehose as "an outsize figure literally and figuratively – that's an individual who has devoted his life to literature". From 2008 to 2020, he was the publisher of MacLehose Press, an imprint of

Quercus Books Quercus is a formerly independent publishing house, based in London, that was acquired by Hodder & Stoughton in 2014. It was founded in 2004 by Mark Smith and Wayne Davies. Quercus is known for its lists in crime (publishing such authors as Ell ...

, and in 2021 founded Mountain Leopard Press, an imprint of the Welbeck Publishing Group. The Mountain Lion list was sold to

Hachette Hachette may refer to: * Hachette (surname) * Hachette Livre, a French publisher, the imprint of Lagardère Publishing ** Hachette Book Group, the American subsidiary ** Hachette Distribution Services, the distribution arm See also * Hachette Fil ...

in December 2022. In 2024, it was announced that MacLehose was to launch Open Borders Press, as the first imprint of Orenda Books.

Early life

Christopher MacLehose was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, Scotland, on 12 July 1940 to Alexander MacLehose and Elizabeth Hope MacLehose (née Bushell). His family was involved with the book trade as printers, booksellers and publishers, and he has described them as "seven generations, all of them second sons". He was educated at

Shrewsbury School Shrewsbury School is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school in Shrewsbury. Founded in 1552 by Edward VI by royal charter, to replace the town's Saxon collegiate foundations which were disestablished in the sixteenth century, Shrewsb ...

(1953–58), and read history at

Worcester College Worcester College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms was ad ...

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

Career

MacLehose took a job at the ''

Glasgow Herald ''The Herald'' is a Scottish broadsheet newspaper founded in 1783. ''The Herald'' is the longest running national newspaper in the world and is the eighth oldest daily paper in the world. The title was simplified from ''The Glasgow Herald'' in ...

'', where he hoped to stay for six months to gain the experience that would enable him to work for the recently founded

Independent Television News Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based media production and broadcast journalism company. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington, D.C. I ...

; however, his ambitions changed direction after a few weeks: "I realised ... I wanted to work with language and words," MacLehose said in a 2012 interview. So he worked in the editorial office of the family printing factory by day, while freelancing by night for ''The Herald'' writing reviews and obituaries. Eventually, he was offered employment as literary editor of ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

'', following which he moved in 1967 to London and went into book publishing, initially as an editor at the

Cresset Press The Cresset Press was a publishing company in London, England, active as an independent press from 1927 for 40 years, and initially specializing in "expensively illustrated limited editions of classical works, like John Milton, Milton's ''Paradise ...

(part of the Barrie Group), with

P. G. Wodehouse Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse ( ; 15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was an English writer and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Je ...

among his authors,Anthony Gardner
"Christopher MacLehose: The champion of translated fiction who struck it rich with Stieg Larsson"
, 2010. as well as

George MacDonald Fraser George MacDonald Fraser (2 April 1925 – 2 January 2008) was a Scottish author and screenwriter. He is best known for a series of works that featured the character Harry Paget Flashman, Flashman. Over the course of his career he wrote eleven n ...

of '' Flashman'' fame, who had been the features editor of the ''Glasgow Herald'' when MacLehose was there. MacLehose subsequently became editorial director of

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his busines ...

, and then editor-in-chief of William Collins. In 1984, MacLehose took charge of the Harvill imprint, of which he was publisher for the next 20 years, with a well respected list that specialised in translated works and included such titles as

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...

's '' Dr Zhivago'', Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's ''

The Leopard ''The Leopard'' ( ) is a novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the ''Risorgimento''. Published posthumously in 1958 by Feltrinelli, after two rejections by the ...

'',

Mikhail Bulgakov Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov ( ; rus, links=no, Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков, p=mʲɪxɐˈil ɐfɐˈnasʲjɪvʲɪdʑ bʊlˈɡakəf; – 10 March 1940) was a Russian and Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The M ...

's ''

The Master and Margarita ''The Master and Margarita'' () is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in ''Moscow (magazine), Moscow'' magazine in ...

'',

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Soviet and Russian author and Soviet dissidents, dissident who helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, especially the Gulag pris ...

's ''

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ''One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich'' (, ) is a short novel by the Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, first published in November 1962 in the Soviet literary magazine ''Novy Mir'' (''New World'').Peter Høeg Peter Høeg (born 17 May 1957) is a Danish writer of fiction. He is best known for his novel ''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'' (1992). Early life Høeg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before becoming a writer, he worked variously as a sailor, ...

's ''

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow ''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'' (), published in America as ''Smilla's Sense of Snow'', is a 1992 novel by Denmark, Danish author Peter Høeg tracing the investigation into the suspicious death of a Greenlandic boy in Denmark. A global bestsel ...

''. Under his leadership, between 1998 and 2005, Harvill Press published a numbered series of books, known as the Leopard Series due to the series emblem (the initial series ran up to number 310 and was revived in 2020). In 1995, MacLehose led a

management buy-out A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or High-net-worth individual, individual. Management- and/or leveraged buyouts bec ...

of Harvill and for the following seven years characterised the company as "a bridge across cultures", counting among his authors

, W. G. Sebald,

José Saramago José de Sousa Saramago (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese people, Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony ith which ...

, Georges Perec">ith which ...

Early life

Career

Awards and honours

References

External links