Leslie Silver
British businessman; Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University (1925-2014)
Leslie Howard Silver, OBE (22 January 1925 – 29 December 2014) was a British executive who was chairman of Leeds United football club and chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University. He was the founder of Silver Paint and Lacquer, later known as Kalon Group PLC, from which he retired in 1991.
Early life
Silver was born in London on 22 January 1925 as a grandson to Jewish immigrants from Poland.
War service
Leslie Silver was born and brought up in Walthamstow, east London, a "poor, working-class background", where his father worked in a clothing factory as a pattern cutter and designer. Silver left school, aged 14, at Easter 1939 and worked in a bookshop. In 1940, after the clothing factory his father worked in was bombed, the family moved to Leeds where his father was employed by Sumrie in the city's thriving clothing trade. Silver volunteered for the RAF in 1943 at the age of 17.
After training as aircrew, he joined Bomber Command in February 1944 as a flight engineer. He flew the full quota of 250 operational hours with 138, 161, 291 and 356 Squadrons, consisting of more than 40 operations in Europe and 20 in the Far East. In the Far East, missions included dropping supplies into Changi gaol.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Leslie Silver” is british businessman; Chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University (1925-2014). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Leslie, Silver and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6531141. VIAF identifies the subject as 316567296. The Library of Congress control number is no2015087891. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2014, 1991 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leslie Silver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.