Lady Colin Campbell

Infobox Person


image_size = 150px
name=Lady Colin Campbell
quotation=
birth_date=Birth date and age|1949|8|17|mf=y
birth_place= Jamaica
occupation=Author, socialite, radio hostess"for Lady Colin Campbell (1857-1911), see" Gertrude Elizabeth Blood

Lady Colin Campbell, (born George William Ziadie [ "A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] , known as Georgie, August 17 1949 [ [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1830715/bio Lady Colin Campbell - Biography ] ] ), is a British writer, biographer, autobiographer, novelist and radio interviewer, known for her biography of Diana, Princess of Wales, "The Real Diana".

Campbell was born in Jamaica, the child of Michael Ziadie. The Ziadie family is prominent in Jamaica, the descendants of half a dozen Maronite Catholic brothers who emigrated from Lebanon in the early 1900s; she says they have gone from being "revered to reviled to treasured as exotica" and are a more important family than the aristocrats into whom she married. ["A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] . She grew up largely in the United States. In 1974 she married Lord Colin Ivar Campbell, the son of Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll, and divorced him the following year. The marriage was violent and she had to have her face reconstructed two months into the marriage ["A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] .

She has two adopted Russian-born sons, a chateau in Provence, and a maisonette in Kennington, near central London. She is described as a former society beauty and a "flamboyant if controversial aristocrat" [ "A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] . She praises meritocracy but trades on her aristocratic connections.

She was born with an unspecified form of intersex, and was brought up as a boy until her late teens. At 13 she realised something was wrong and secretly sought the help of a gynecologist, but her parents authorised brutal treatment with other physicians who forcibly gave her male hormones. When she was 18 and working in New York City as a model, she had gender reassignment surgery. She describes this as a handicap that she has overcome, making her a stronger person. [ "A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] .

She has been linked with Oliver Eden, 8th Baron Henley, Conservative minister; Larry Lamb, actor; and Robert Lund ["A very unladylike lady!" by Jenny Johnson "Daily Mail" 10 January 2008] .

Books

* "Lady Colin Campbell’s Guide to Being a Modern Lady" (1986)
* "Diana in Private: The Princess Nobody Knows" (1992)
* "The Royal Marriages: What Really Goes on in the Private World of the Queen and her Family" (1993)
* "A Life Worth Living" (1997), autobiography
* "The Real Diana" (2005) - a republication of her 1997 book, with sources
* "Empress Bianca" (2006) - withdrawn after legal threats from the world's richest widow Lily Safra

References