Laurence Paul Elwell-Sutton (1912–1984) was a British scholar of Persian culture and Islamic studies.
[1] He was professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, where he held a chair in the school's Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
[3] His 1955 book Persian Oil: a Study in Power Politics is noted as both influential and controversial.
[3] He attended Winchester College and earned his honors degree in Arabic at the School of Oriental Studies at the University of London in 1934.
[2] He then worked for several years as an expert on Persia for the BBC, before serving as the press attache for the British Embassy in Tehran from 1943 to 1947.