Ian Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll

Coat of arms of the Dukes of Argyll

Inveraray Castle , home of the Campbells

Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll (born June 18, 1903 in Paris , † April 7, 1973 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish peer . He was best known for the scandalous divorce from his third wife Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll .

Family and early years

Ian Campbell was the son of Douglas Walter Campbell (1877-1926) and his first wife Aimee Marie Suzanne Lawrence († 1920); his father was considered the " black sheep " of the family. He was a great-grandson of George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll and had Scottish paternal and American paternal roots.

Campbell first grew up in France . He attended Eton College and a school in Milton , USA, and studied at Christ Church College of Oxford University .

With the childless death of his second uncle, Niall Campbell, 10th Duke of Argyll , he inherited his title of nobility as Duke of Argyll , as well as the family seat Inveraray Castle , which was in a poor structural condition.

Campbell's marriages

First marriage

In December 1927, Ian Campbell married Janet Aitken, the 17-year-old daughter of press magnate Lord Beaverbrook . Janet Aitken had been warned against this marriage by her family and friends, as Campbell was notorious for drinking and gambling. During their honeymoon, he raped his young wife and told her to stop “crying”. Then he took her to a Paris brothel "so that she could learn something".

While on a boat trip to Jamaica , Janet Campbell found out that her husband had stolen her jewelry to pay off his gambling debts. He later also claimed her late mother's jewels from her, and when she refused, he faked a suicide attempt. Lord Beaverbrook had his son-in-law watched, secretly bought back the jewels, and tried in vain to get Campbell to work in his newspaper empire. Eventually he sent the couple to Cannes . From there, Janet Campbell fled back to London ; her husband followed her and tried to persuade her to come back to him. During this "conversation" his wife suffered several broken bones. The couple divorced in 1934; Their daughter Jeanne, born in 1928, was from 1962 to 1963 the third wife of Norman Mailer , who was married a total of six times.

Second marriage

During his marriage to Janet, Ian Campbell had a relationship with his future second wife, Louise, whom he married in 1935. The marriage lasted 16 years and had two sons. The older, Ian , later inherited the titles of nobility from his father. His younger brother was Colin, whose divorced wife, Lady Colin Campbell, became known as the biographer of Princess Diana and who, according to her statements, resembled his father in character.

At the outbreak of World War II , Campbell joined the 51st (Highland) Division , had the rank of captain and was the liaison officer to the secret service. During the Battle of Dunkirk he was captured as one of 10,000 British, mainly Scots, by the German Wehrmacht under Major General Erwin Rommel in June 1940 near Saint-Valery-en-Caux . The event caused a stir in Britain, as the soldiers had been left behind in France because the British ships had not reached the coast in time to evacuate their compatriots. In 1973, shortly before his death, Ian Campbell wrote: “It has always been abundantly clear to me that no division has ever been more uselessly sacrificed. It could have been got away a week before but the powers that be - owing I think to very faulty information - had come to the conclusion that there was a capacity for resistance in France which was not actually there. " It became more and more clear that no division was ever so senselessly sacrificed, a week earlier and it would have gotten away, but those in power came to the conclusion - probably on the basis of false information - that resilience in France was stronger than it really was. ")

Until the end of the war Campbell was a German prisoner of war in Laufen Castle near Salzburg , where he worked in the camp kitchen. During this time, his wife Louise, in cooperation with the Red Cross, organized a supply of the prisoners with packages.

In 1949 he inherited the title of nobility from his second uncle and thereby became a member of the House of Lords .

Campbell's marriage to Louise ended in divorce in 1951 because Campbell had a lover whom he wanted to marry, Margaret Sweeny, née Whigham. His wife Louise kept custody of the sons.

Third marriage

Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1992)

In 1951 he married Margaret Sweeny. While he was still married to his second wife, he proposed to her ten days after meeting her aboard a Golden Arrow ferry . When her future husband asked for money to renovate the castle, his father-in-law loaned him £ 250,000 , but had the duke sign papers pledging valuable castle furnishings. The duchess herself later stated that she had taken on additional living expenses for her husband, e.g. B. the school fees for his children from the second marriage.

This marriage came to an end in public: Ian Campbell filed for divorce from his third wife in 1961. Two years later there was a sensational divorce process that lasted eleven days and that the British nation watched with great interest. The Duke of Argyll presented 13 Polaroid photos to the court , hand-lettered, showing the Duchess naked with a headless man, but with their typical three-strand pearl necklace. His daughter from his first marriage had stolen these photos from her apartment in London together with the diaries of the Duchess in her absence. The Duke presented the court with a list of 88 men who were alleged to be lovers of his wife, including two members of the government and three members of the royal family. Bob Hope , Maurice Chevalier , men from the neighboring village of the castle were named, and she is also said to have seduced young men who could have been her sons.

Fourth marriage

Ian Campbell, 12th Duke of Argyll

A few months after the divorce decree, Ian Campbell married his fourth wife, the wealthy Mathilda Coster Mortimer (1925-1997), who was 22 years his junior. The couple, who had lived in Paris since 1969, had a daughter who lived only five days.

Mathilda Mortimer was born in Geneva to a wealthy American family . She studied philosophy at Radcliffe College in Cambridge , Massachusetts . In 1945 she married Clemens Heller, a Vienna- born university professor at Harvard . The couple had three sons, including a pair of twins, and were divorced in 1962. The youngest son, Alexis, turned to Sufism in the early 1960s and died in Morocco in 1974 at the age of 21 , probably exhausted from religious retreats.

Campbell died in 1973 in a hospital in the UK. His widow spent her old age in Scotland and traveling; she died in Paris in 1997.

Nobility title

• 11. Duke of Argyll (Peerage of Scotland, 1701)
• 4. Duke of Argyll (Peerage of the United Kingdom, 1892)
• 11. Marquess of Kintyre and Lorn (Peerage of Scotland, 1701)
• 20th Earl of Argyll (Peerage of Scotland, 1457)
• 11. Earl of Campbell and Cowall (Peerage of Scotland, 1701)
• 11. Viscount of Lochow and Glenyla (Peerage of Scotland, 1701)
• 21. Lord Campbell (Peerage of Scotland, 1445)
• 20. Lord Lorne (Peerage of Scotland, 1470)
• 14. Lord Kintyre (Peerage of Scotland, 1626)
• 11. Lord of Inverary, Mull, Morvern and Tirie (Peerage of Scotland, 1701)
• 7. Baron Sundridge (Peerage of Great Britain, 1766)
• 8. Baron Hamilton of Hameldon (Peerage of Great Britain, 1776)
• 13. Campbell Baronet , of Lundie (Baronetage of Nova Scotia, 1627)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Michael Thornton: How I lost my virginity to the VERY racy real life chatelaine of Downton's Scottish castle on dailymail.co.uk v. December 29, 2012
2. ^ Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll (1903-1973). The Glasgow Herald, April 9, 1973, accessed June 9, 2018 . 
3. ^ Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll. thepeerage.com, accessed June 9, 2018 . 
4. ^ ^{A b c} Allan Nicol: Part I of The Argyll Divorce, Edinburgh 1963: The Three Stranded Pearl Necklace. (No longer available online.) The Firm, July 22, 2013, archived from the original on October 6, 2013 ; accessed on October 3, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ Anselm Lingnau: The Reel of the 51st Division. Retrieved October 5, 2013 . 
6. ↑ Ian Bocain: Survivors of 'sacrificed' division still feel bitter. The Sunday Telegraph, June 4, 2000, accessed October 5, 2013 . 
7. ^ John Peyton: Without the Benefit of Laundry. The Autobiography of John Peyton. Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997, p. 34 , accessed October 5, 2013 . 
8. ^ Duchess's Work for the Red Cross. Glasgow Herald , November 18, 1949, accessed October 5, 2013 . 
9. ^ Inveraray in Wartime. Retrieved October 5, 2013 . 
10. ^ Allan Nicol: Part II of The Argyll Divorce, Edinburgh 1963: The Three Stranded Pearl Necklace. (No longer available online.) The Firm, July 30, 2013, archived from the original on October 10, 2013 ; accessed on October 5, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ Stephen McGinty: The Duchess of Argyll showed that Scots could lead the way when it comes to pornographic pictures making a regular appearance in court. The Scotsman, March 23, 2012, accessed October 5, 2013 . 
12. ↑ Michael Thornton: I lost my virginity to the VERY racy real life chatelaine of Downton's Scottish castle. The Daily Mail, December 29, 2012, accessed October 5, 2013 . 
13. ↑ David Randall: The Duchess of Argyll showed that Scots could lead the way when it comes to pornographic pictures making a regular appearance in court. The Independent, February 17, 2013, accessed October 5, 2013 . 
14. ↑ William Currie: Mother's Search. Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1993, accessed October 5, 2013 . 

Web links

• Ian Campbell at Hansard (English)
• Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll on thepeerage.com , accessed September 11, 2016.
• National Portrait Gallery: Ian Douglas Campbell, 11th Duke of Argyll. Retrieved October 5, 2013 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Niall Campbell	Duke of Argyll 1949-1973	Ian Campbell