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Leonard John Kensell Setright (10 August 1931 – 7 September 2005) was an English motoring journalist and author.

Born of Australian parents in London, his father Henry Roy Setright, was an engineer who invented the Setright ticket machine used on buses and trams. Setright studied Law at the University of London and practised for a time but hated the profession. His National Service was served in the Royal Air Force as an air traffic controller.

After writing for the engineering magazine Machine Age in the early 1960s, Setright became a motoring journalist and author. He contributed to CAR Magazine for more than 30 years and wrote several books on cars and automotive engineering. Setright often espoused the virtues of Bristol cars and the Honda Prelude, amongst other things, while holding a consistent dislike for diesel-powered cars. His writing style polarised readers as some considered it to be pompous and containing excessively esoteric quotes. He also wrote about music, motorcycles and high-fidelity sound systems, and contributed to among others Punch, The Independent, Bike and Car and Driver.

He was also known for his love of smoking tobacco, in particular of Sobranie Black Russians.

Setright was a scholar of Judaism and a practising Jew throughout his life.Married twice, his first wife Christine committed suicide in 1980. After this he spent some time in a Lubavitch community in Texas, later returning to the UK. He succumbed to cancer in 2005.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "L. J. K. Setright", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0