Colin Campbell - Dictionary of Falklands Biography

Colin Campbell was my uncle through his marriage to my mother's sister (Jackie Harvie) and father of our three rumbustious cousins, John, Neil and Angus. He was an ever present figure in our Hampshire childhood, with a splendid dry wit married to an air of shabby gentility (linen jacket and old Harrovian school tie) as he looked after the chickens, the garden (which included a grass tennis court) and his wife.

Later in life we maintained a long correspondence based on a shared love of the Highlands, gossip-enlivened family history and Scottish dancing. When I went up to St Andrews for four years he lent me his father’s splendid dark green Highland dress complete with old silver buttons.

This biographical review in the Dictionary of Falklands Biography concentrates on his career not his character. He was of the generation that was torn from out of family life in India in order to be sent to boarding schools in England, and essentially brought up in boarding houses on the English coast during the holidays. I don't think Colin ever quiet forgave his mother for this, but it made him and his brother (who taught law at Cambridge) admirably tough, adaptable and independent.

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