Life Worth Living (40 page)
Authors: Lady Colin Campbell
As I look back, I can see many instances when people offered me a helping hand. I can also see the many sharks that circled, thinking there was blood in the water when all it was was a bottle of red ink. However, these people have not succeeded in impoverishing my life, nuisance though they can be. One of our greatest gifts is knowledge, and any experience that does not end in death, any person who does not destroy you, can enrich your life. By that yardstick, I am a very wealthy woman indeed, for I have not only had adversaries who sought to devour me by confusing a source of strength with a sign of weakness, but also friends and relations who have supported me with love, compassion, kindness, understanding and companionship. I have undoubtedly had my fair share of pleasure, privilege, pain and poignancy, but as I look back on the rich tapestry of a life that was, in many ways, foisted upon me because of both the advantages and the disadvantages of my birth, I can only say that I am grateful for all of it. It has not always been easy, but everything has worked out for my ultimate good.
Lady Colin Campbell was born in St Andrew, Jamaica in 1949, into one of the island’s wealthiest and most influential families. When her international best-seller
Diana in Private
was published in 1992, the consensus among reviewers was that, though fascinating, royal revelations were as nothing compared to the author’s own extraordinary life.
The victim of a rare cosmetic condition, Lady Colin Campbell was born a girl but brought up as a boy; she had to wait until the age of twenty-one before receiving corrective medical treatment, and suffered a turbulent and short-lived marriage in the 1970s to the son of the 11
th
Duke of Argyll, with whom, twenty years later, she was still involved in a legal battle to save the reputation he had sought to destroy. Yet she also enjoyed an idyllic childhood, a glamorous career as a New York model, love affairs with some of the world’s most eligible bachelors and connections with leading members of the royal family, before becoming one of Britain’s most respected charity organisers, and the mother of two adopted Russian children. A true assortment of riches, this is her own candid, poignant and remarkable story.
The Untold Life of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Diana in Private
The Real Diana
Lady Colin Campbell’s Guide To Being A Modern Lady
Empress Bianca
Daughter of Narcissus
The Royal Marriages: Private Lives of the Queen and her Children With Love from Pet Heaven
First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Little, Brown and Company.
This edition published by Dynasty Press Limited in 2015.
Copyright © 1997-2015 by Lady Colin Campbell.
Lady Colin Campbell has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author this work.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 9781910050866
