Lady Colin Campbell

Lady Colin Campbell
Born	(1949-08-17) August 17, 1949 Jamaica
Occupation(s)	Author, socialite, radio hostess

for Lady Colin Campbell (1857-1911), see Gertrude Elizabeth Blood

Lady Colin Campbell, (born George William Ziadie, known as Georgie, August 17 1949), 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.. 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 .

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". She praises meritocracy but trades on her aristocratic connections.

She was born with an form of intersex condition that was either unspecified or unknown at the time she was born, or has simply been kept private information. She 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 assignment surgery (a type of surgery that "clarifies" ambiguities, as opposed to gender re-assignment surgery, which involves changing from one unambiguous characteristic sex to another). She describes this as a handicap that she has overcome, making her a stronger person..

She has been linked with Oliver Eden, 8th Baron Henley, Conservative minister; Larry Lamb, actor; and Robert Lund.

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