Leonard John Kensell Setright

Place of Birth: London

Born:August 10, 1931

Died:London, September 7, 2005, aged 74.

With his distinctive LJK Setright byline, Leonard Setright was one of the finest, most eloquent and best- loved motoring correspondents.

Although coming late to Ortho-dox Judaism, he had deep Jewish roots in his parent’s native Australia. His mother Selena’s family were founder members of Sydney’s Great Synagogue. His father was an engineer, best known as the inventor of the rotary ticket machine, widely used on British buses till the 1970s.

Born in Hackney, Leonard Set-right went to grammar school in Pal-mers Green, North London, and read law at London University. But he did not enjoy its practice, so in 1960 he turned to writing about engineering, which held a pivotal place in his affections, due to his father’s influence.

He joined a leading technical magazine, “Machine Age,” and be-came its editor before attracting att-ention in “Car Magazine” at home and “Car & Driver” in the USA. He spoke on radio and wrote more than 25 books. The most recent, “Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car,” was published in 2003.

His style and knowledge were unrivalled, as was his love of provocation. In his reviews of new models of cars and motorbikes he delighted in challenging contemporary fashion as he argued against speed limits, modern car design or diesel engines.

Any editor who commissioned an article from him knew it would arrive on the required day, with the exact number of words, no mistakes, and usually laid out precisely for that publication. He would embellish with Latin or even Hebrew quotations, apparently taking the reader’s literary knowledge for granted.

A fast and expert driver, with a romantic picture of the unfettered driving of a past era, Leonard loved cars and motorbikes, especially his Bristol and Honda machines. He was equally stylish in his own persona, sporting a black Russian cig-arette and glass of champagne.

He was an equally accomplished musician, a founder member of the Philharmonia Chorus and an expert clarinettist who, as a National Ser-viceman, had played in the RAF or-chestra, sharing a desk with Dudley Cohen, founder of the Zemel Choir.

When called up, as Ariel Jon-athan ben Zvi, to read the haftarah at Kingston, Surbiton and District Synagogue, where he was a member, he would write out music and words on manuscript paper, from which he chanted. He had a collection of shofarim with which he delighted generations of children .

A ba’al teshuvah, Leonard experienced his return to Judaism after the tragic death of his first wife in 1980. With his two daughters having left home, he visited the US to change direction professionally —but ended up still writing about cars.

In Texas he came under the influence of the Lubavitch organisation. On his return, he remarried and moved to Surbiton, where he could easily attend synagogue.

Embracing his new-found Jud-aism with his usual wholehearted enthusiasm and style, in 1986 he wrote a defence of shechitah for the JC, citing its viability on “scientific, religious and humanitarian grounds.” He also enjoyed meetings of the Guild of Jewish Journalists.

He is survived by his two daughters and his second wife, Helen.

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Tall, sporting long flowing locks and beard, monocle, a wide-brimmed hat and with a Black Russian always in his cigarette holder, Leonard Setright, who has died of cancer aged 74, presented an image which set him apart from a new wave of motoring journalists that emerged during the 1970s. But it was not only his visual persona that distinguished him. LJK Setright, as he bylined himself, was a writer whose intellectual rigour was underpinned by an exhaustive knowledge of both engineering and classical culture. He deployed both to impress - if not bamboozle - his audiences in such magazines as Car and Bike.

Car's youthful founding editor, Doug Blain, was somewhat bemused by the first piece Setright submitted - on aeroflow dynamics - in 1970, but was tickled by its arch prose and abundant self-confidence. So Setright joined a triumvirate of uniformly audacious columnists who became, in his case for more than three decades, synonymous with the magazine. Setright soon established himself as an idiosyncratic, even mischievous writer - he peppered his copy with Latin quotations and once referred to feet as "bicrural extremities" - but his opinions betrayed an authority that few dared challenge and many envied. His engineering interests led to many influential books, including Some Unusual Engines (1975), two volumes on the expensive and, of course, eccentric Bristol marque (1974 and 1998) and With Flying Colours (1987).

Setright was born in London, the son of Australian émigrés. His mother Lena was a fashion buyer and his father Henry an engineer, who invented the Setright rotary bus ticket machine and the Tote betting system. Setright's passion for all things mechanical stemmed from that childhood "when engineers were worshiped". He was educated at Southgate county school in Winchmore Hill where he developed an penchant for music and unconventional attire. An accomplished clarinet player, he joined Ray Potter's five-piece jazz band, and when Setright acquired his first car, a yellow 1920s Citroën Cloverleaf, he and Potter regularly visited the Goodwood racing circuit, igniting another enduring enthusiasm for the deerstalker-capped teenager.

Setright studied law at London University but hated it as a profession. Gaining great satisfaction but little income as a classical musician - he co-founded the Philharmonia Chorus in 1957 - he decided instead to pursue journalism and in 1960 joined the leading contemporary magazine, Machine Age, eventually becoming its editor. Then, in 1965, he took a job in public relations for the Firestone Tyre Company - in later life he was to be quietly involved in the development of radial tyres at Pirelli.

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He won the Gwen Salmon Trophy for automotive photography and became a fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 1969, and joined the Institute of Rubber Industries in 1970. But it was at Car that he found a natural home for his talents. Setright was soon testing cars and motorcycles, as well as entertainingly dissecting the finer points of their design technology and lambasting the horrors of public transport or the bogus economics of speed limits.

As a driver, Setright was formidably fast to the point where at press launches he was usually given a vehicle of his own rather than have anyone else share one with him.

As Bike's callow founding editor, I sought him as a columnist in 1973, and while superficially aloof, he proved a kindly, assiduously polite, even shy man. However when fuelled with his favourite vintage champagnes, he was known to pick up a clarinet and play dazzling solos with the hotel bands that serenaded journalists on press junkets.

In 1980 tragedy struck. His first wife, Christine, a professional opera singer, drove one of his beloved Bristols up to Scotland and committed suicide. Setright, seeking an abrupt change of life, moved to America, where a visit to a Lubavitch community in Texas reaffirmed his Judaism. Embracing a devout orthodoxy with his usual studious zeal, he became something of an expert on schechitah, or ritual slaughter.

But, inevitably, he returned to journalism. His last book Drive On! (2003) is a fascinating account of the relationship between cars and social development, and it is ironic that in view of what killed him, one of his last essays eloquently railed against manufacturers that now offer non-smoking cars. "It is refreshing," he concluded, "that there remain stalwarts for whom driving and smoking - two of the greatest pleasure known to man - are not to be separated."

He is survived by his second wife Helen, and daughters Hilary and Anthea.

· Leonard John Kensell Setright, writer and musician, born August 10 1931; died September 7 2005

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._J._K._Setright

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Setright-3