Arnold Spencer Leese (16 November 1878 – 18 January 1956) was a British fascist politician. Leese was initially prominent as a veterinary expert on camels. A virulent anti-Semite, he led his own fascist movement, the Imperial Fascist League, and was a prolific author and publisher of polemics both before and after the Second World War. Early life and education Leese was born on 16 November 1878 in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England, the son of Spencer Leese, a manufacturer and artist. He was a nephew of Sir Joseph Francis Leese, 1st Baronet (1845–1914), and a second cousin of Sir Oliver Leese, 3rd Baronet (1894–1978). Leese was educated at Giggleswick School. An only child, his childhood was characterised by loneliness. The death of his father in 1894 left the family in financial difficulties, forcing Leese to leave boarding school. He nonetheless attended the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons thanks to the financial help of his grandfather. Veterinary career After graduating in 1903, Leese first worked as an equine clinician in London, then accepted a post at the Civil Veterinary Department in India in 1907, where he became an expert on the camel. He worked in India for six years, largely along the North-West Frontier, then was transferred to Italian Somaliland to work for the East Africa Government's veterinary department, where he was posted at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Leese was recognised as a leading authority on the camel and published several articles on this animal and its maladies, the first appearing in The Journal of Tropical Veterinary Science in 1909. A camel parasite, Thelazia leesei was named after him by Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet in 1910. In 1927, he published A Treatise on the One-Humped Camel in Health and in Disease, which would remain a standard work in India for fifty years. During the First World War, Leese was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, then served as a Camel Purchase Officer to the Somaliland Remount Commission with the Camel Corps, and in France on the Western Front as a Veterinary Officer for the Advanced Horse Transport Depot. During the war, he married May Winifred King, the daughter of his former landlord. Leese returned to England and settled in Stamford, Lincolnshire, practising as a vet until retirement in June 1928. Fascist activist In the early 1920s, Leese became interested in Italian Fascism and developed a fascination