Christopher MacLehose

Christopher Colin MacLehose CBE (born 1940) is a British publisher who in 2008 founded the MacLehose Press, an imprint of Quercus Books, having previously been notable as publisher of Harvill Press (from 1984 to 2004), where his successes included bringing out the stories of Raymond Carver and Richard Ford 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 having introduced to an English-speaking readership the bestselling Swedish author Stieg Larsson 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".

Christopher MacLehose was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1940 into a family that was involved with the book trade as printers, booksellers and publishers, which he has described as "seven generations, all of them second sons". He attended Shrewsbury School (1953–58), and later read history at Oxford University.

MacLehose took a job at the Glasgow Herald, 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; 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, following which he moved in 1967 to London and went into book publishing, initially as an editor at the Cresset Press (part of the Barrie Group), with P. G. Wodehouse among his authors, as well as George Macdonald Fraser of Flashman fame, who had been the features editor of the Glasgow Herald when MacLehose was there. He subsequently became editorial director of Chatto & Windus, and then editor-in-chief of William Collins.

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