About Us

Chiselbury Publishing was founded by Stuart Leasor as James Leasor Publishing in 2011 to make the works of his father, James Leasor, available to new and old readers. James Leasor had been one of the bestselling and most prolific British authors of the second half of the 20th Century, writing over 50 books ranging from thrillers and historical novels to histories and biographies. However none were available as ebooks and the few in print had legacy contracts with publishers who had little interest in them.

We were then approached by leading journalist Dominic Midgley to see if we could make the bestselling biographies that he had written with Chris Hutchins on Roman Abramovich and Sir James Goldsmith available again.

We were then approached by a growing number of other authors wanting us to publish new and previously published works and so we rebranded as Chiselbury to reflect our new profile in 2021. Since then we have added a growing number of both first time and previously published authors to the line up. We currently have approaching 100 titles by nearly 40 different authors in print or nearing publication.

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Chiselbury was founded and is run by Stuart Leasor. He had books and publishing in his blood from birth, being the youngest son of James Leasor, who as well as being a bestselling author, also set up Elm Tree Books, a subsidiary of Hamish Hamilton.

However Stuart only came to the book business much later in life. Taking an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oriel College, Oxford, he served as an officer in the 17th/21st Lancers for 10 years. He then moved into a career in financial public relations, during which he established probably the first financial PR firm to specialise in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Over the last 35 years he has advised governments, leading global companies and some of the world’s richest businessmen, as well as situations far from the headlines, in a wide range of tasks including sentiment transition, complex financial transactions, crises and corporate disputes across five continents. He also directed nationwide public awareness campaigns to facilitate major structural and fiscal reform in a number of countries, including Bulgaria, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

When not poring over a manuscript he can often be found behind the wheel of (or underneath…) his 1937 SS Jaguar 100, which he inherited from James Leasor and which features in a number of the latter’s books, including the Aristo Autos series.