Elspeth Campbell

Who is Elspeth Campbell?

Elspeth Mary, Lady Campbell is the wife of the former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell.

Elspeth Urquhart was born in New Delhi, India, one of four children of Major-General Roy Urquhart and his wife Pamela. She lived in Devon with her great grandmother and, after the Second World War she accompanied the family to Kuala Lumpur when her father was posted to British Malaya during the Malayan Emergency. This was followed by two years in Austria before she was sent to a convent school in Devon. There she proved to be an able student, earning A levels sufficient to admit her to Oxford, but her father vetoed this idea and she was instead sent to a finishing school. She later worked at the Conservative Party's London offices.

On 13 October 1962, Urquhart married Canadian-born Sir Philip Grant-Suttie, 8th Baronet. They had one son, and divorced in 1969. It was during this divorce that she was introduced to Menzies Campbell by her barrister, future Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Nicholas Fairbairn. She married Campbell in 1970.