Jeffrey Epstein’s British ‘Mentor’ and the Historic Manor He Visited
Published on 20 September 2025
It is suggested that Epstein’s ties with the Leese family and his entry into the Bullingdon Club’s social circles were pivotal in his association with socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
A recently published birthday book by a US congressional committee highlights the historic connections between the Leese family and Epstein, a now infamous figure, throughout his ascent to influence.
The book includes messages from influential Labour figure Lord Mandelson, who faced dismissal the previous week as a US ambassador following the release of his emails to Epstein………..
This is the 15th-century manor house where Jeffrey Epstein began his journey toward the heart of the British establishment, thanks to a wealthy arms dealer.
Located near the land of Shakespeare, South Wraxall Manor House is said to be where Sir Walter Raleigh first smoked tobacco in England.
Recently, it has come to light that this estate in Bradford-On-Avon played an essential part in Epstein’s introduction to the British upper class.
The country house belonged to international arms dealer Douglas Leese, who invited Jeffrey to stay for long weekends.
London-born defense broker linked to Epstein and Khashoggi
Douglas Leese (1923–2011) was a London-born defense contractor widely reported to have operated as an independent arms broker. Parliamentary records place Leese in the money-flow of the £40 billion Al-Yamamah fighter-jet package negotiated for BAE Systems with Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s.1
Multiple investigative accounts add that he worked alongside Saudi fixer Adnan Khashoggi on that and earlier deals and later introduced Jeffrey Epstein to financier-fraudster Steven Hoffenberg in 1987, branding Epstein “a genius” while arranging a $25,000-a-month consulting retainer.23
These intersecting threads — big-ticket weapons sales, offshore finance, and covert networking — explain how Leese sits at the nexus of Epstein’s early money-making and Khashoggi’s oil-for-arms milieu.
A newer tranche of reporting and first-person recollection via Julian Leese adds a more granular mechanism for the Leese–Epstein connection: Epstein did not merely “meet” the Leese family through arms-trade circles, but, at least by the late 1980s, actively leveraged them as a bridge into Towers Financial’s international bond-sales machine — pulling Julian Leese into sales efforts that later collapsed into scandal and personal fallout.45
In recent days, images circulating on social media have highlighted passages from a book alleging Epstein’s involvement in arms sales to the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war.
The excerpts come from pages 20 and 21 of the second volume of the book A Nation Under Blackmail, published in 2022.
According to the book, Epstein’s connections with Iran date back not to the final years of his life, but primarily to the 1980s and 1990s, involving covert activities in arms trafficking, money laundering, and intelligence networks.
This period coincided with the Iran-Iraq war and secret operations such as the Iran-Contra affair.
According to statements by Steven Hoffenberg, a former close associate of Epstein, Epstein received training in the early 1980s under Sir Douglas Leese, whom Hoffenberg described as instructing Epstein in arms smuggling, the creation of shell companies, and money laundering.
Hoffenberg has said that by 1983, Epstein was directly involved in the sale of Chinese weapons to Iran through the state-owned company Norinco, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war.
Parallel operations and the role of BCCI
Hoffenberg claims these activities were carried out as part of an operation running “in parallel” with the Iran-Contra affair. According to this account, Epstein, Douglas Leese, and Adnan Khashoggi, the well-known Saudi arms dealer, worked together in these dealings.
Under this narrative, financing and money transfers relied heavily on the services of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), which was later shut down amid revelations of widespread money laundering, covert financing operations, and links to intelligence services in several countries.
Links to Israeli intelligence networks
In another account, Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence officer, has claimed that Robert Maxwell, the British-Czech media tycoon and owner of the Mirror Group, sought to involve Epstein in the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran as part of intelligence operations.
According to Ben-Menashe, Epstein was frequently present at Maxwell’s London office during that period and maintained close ties with this network, connections that have surfaced repeatedly in later accounts and documents.
In early November 1985, at the suggestion of the head of the National Security Council (NSC), Robert (“Bud”) McFarlane, Reagan authorized a secret initiative to sell antitank and antiaircraft missiles to Iran in exchange for that country’s help in securing the release of Americans held hostage by terrorist groups in Lebanon. The initiative directly contradicted the administration’s publicly stated policy of refusing to negotiate with terrorists or to aid countries—such as Iran—that supported international terrorism. News of the arms-for-hostages deal, first made public in November 1986 (only one month after Reagan ordered raids on Libya in retaliation for its alleged involvement in the Berlin bombing), proved intensely embarrassing to the president. Even more damaging, however, was the announcement later that month by Attorney General Edwin Meese that a portion of the $48 million earned from the sales had been diverted to a secret fund to purchase weapons and supplies for the Contras in Nicaragua. The diversion was undertaken by an obscure NSC aide, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, with the approval of McFarlane’s successor at the NSC, Rear Admiral John Poindexter. (North, as it was later revealed, had also engaged in private fund-raising for the Contras.) These activities constituted a violation of a law passed by Congress in 1984 (the second Boland Amendment) that forbade direct or indirect American military aid to the Contra insurgency.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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