His adolescence saw him spending time both in Paris and Budapest, before attending Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he graduated with a degree in Modern History.
[2] In 1973, he was recruited by the British Printing Corporation as founder and managing director of Futura Publications, a paperback start-up complementary to hardback house Macdonald and Jane's.
This marked the start of a 40-year friendship between author and publisher, and semi-annual visits to Colleen's home on the remote Pacific shores of Norfolk Island.
[4] After leaving Orion in 2003, Cheetham acted as consultant at Random House UK, and held leading positions thereafter at Quercus Publishing and Atlantic Books.
Cheetham was to briefly leave and then return in 2017; under his aegis Head of Zeus reoriented away from an overwhelming focus on the e-book market toward a more balanced model.