CAMPBELL, Christopher 1951-

(Christy Campbell)

PERSONAL: Born 1951.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperCollins Publishers, 77-85 Fulham Palace Rd., Hammersmith, London W6 8JB, England.

CAREER: Writer. Sunday Telegraph, London, England, journalist, 1990—.

WRITINGS:

AS CHRISTY CAMPBELL; UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

(As Christopher Campbell; illustrator, with John W. Wood) Aces and Aircraft of World War I, Blandford Press (Poole, Dorset, England), 1981, Greenwich House (New York, NY), 1984.

War Facts Now, Fontana Paperbacks (London, England), 1982, published as Weapons of War, P. Bedrick Books (New York, NY), 1983.

(As Christopher Campbell) Nuclear Weapons FactBook, Presidio (Novato, CA), 1984.

(As Christopher Campbell) Air Warfare: The FourthGeneration, Arco (New York, NY), 1984.

Airland Battle 2000, Hamlyn (Twickenham, Middlesex, England), 1986.

The World War II Fact Book, 1939-1945, Stein & Day (New York, NY), 1987.

The VW Beetle, Hamlyn (London, England), 1990.

Air War Pacific, Hamlyn (London, England), 1991.

Commercial Aircraft Markings and Profiles, Hamlyn (London, England), 1991.

The Hamlyn Guide to Commercial Aircraft and AirlineMarkings, Hamlyn (London, England), 1992.

The Maharajah's Box: An Imperial Story of Conspiracy, Love, and a Guru's Prophecy, HarperCollins (Australia), 2001, published as The Maharajah's Box: An Exotic Tale of Espionage, Intrigue, and Illicit Love in the Days of the Raj, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2002.

Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, HarperCollins (London, England), 2002.

Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved for the World, HarperCollins (London, England), 2004, published as The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC), 2005.

Contributor to books, including War in Peace, edited by John Pimlott, M. Cavendish (New York, NY), 1987. Contributor to periodicals, including London Sunday Times, Sunday Correspondent, and London Daily Telegraph.

SIDELIGHTS: Christopher "Christy" Campbell became a journalist for the London Sunday Telegraph when he was hired as a defense correspondent to cover the Gulf War. He specializes in forensic historical investigations and has also written a number of volumes about warfare, weapons, and aircraft, including The World War II Fact Book, 1939-1945, a quick-reference guide to World War II. The book is divided into three sections that focus on operations, people, and weapons. It also includes short descriptions of the most important battles and people in the war.

In 1997 Campbell found a story on the Internet that caught his interest. It was about a list put out by the Swiss Banker's Association that contained the names of 1,800 holders of accounts that had not been touched in fifty years. On it was the name of "Duleep Singh, Catherine (Princess), last heard of in 1942." Since Duleep was the deceased daughter of Maharajah Duleep Singh, Campbell concluded that the Swiss safety-deposit box in question might be filled with jewels, gold, or the deeds to property.

The Maharajah's Box: An Imperial Story of Conspiracy, Love, and a Guru's Prophecy is based on Campbell's investigation and is the story of the last emperor of the Sikhs, a religion founded in the sixteenth century by a Punjabi Hindu. Duleep Singh, at around the age of ten, became king of Punjab, located in northwest India. The British took over the kingdom in 1849, and the young maharajah was forced to give up his throne and all of his possessions, including the famed Kohi-Noor diamond, which came into the possession of Great Britain's Queen Victoria. The young king was brought to England to be raised as a Christian gentleman. Victoria became godmother to Singh's son, and Duleep Singh led a genteel life. During middle age, however, he abandoned his family to attempt to overthrow the British government in India and reclaim his throne. The ill-fated mission was aided by a number of international co-conspirators, including Irish revolutionaries and Russian ultra nationalists. The Maharajah's Box follows Singh's life until his exile in the Suffolk, England, countryside and includes a range of real-life characters who include soldier-of-fortune General Carroll-Teviss of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Hungarian August Theodor Schoefft. A critic for the London Sunday Times wrote that "the story of Duleep Singh's strange life is remarkable and entertaining, and Christy Campbell's account is well written."

Campbell's Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria centers around a conspiracy to dynamite Westminster Abbey during the queen's Golden Jubilee in 1887 by the Fenians, the militant wing of the Irish nationalist movement that, along with their successors, the Clan-na-Gael, were connected to the Irish gangs of New York. Victoria, whose life was threatened more times than that of any other British ruler—seven by pistol—avoided the fate planned by the Irish American assassins, who missed their boat from New York to Liverpool, England, and arrived too late to carry out their deadly plan.

The central figure in Fenian Fire is General Frederic Millen, an Irish-American soldier-of-fortune who played double agent, ultimately working as an informer for the British government in 1865. Campbell's investigation reveals that the most surprising figure in the plot against the queen was her own prime minister, Lord Salisbury. In a review on the Guardian Unlimited, Roy Hattersley commented that "to secure that verdict [of Salisbury's guilt], Campbell has set out his case paragraph by paragraph. Each item in the indictment is headed with date and location. . . . [T]he story moves at the pace of the best sort of adventure story." Spectator contributor Jane Ridley wrote that "if Campbell is right, this is historical dynamite. It really does force a reappraisal of Salisbury. For a prime minister to sanction an Irish conspiracy to blow up the Queen was gambling with very high stakes indeed. Salisbury was either frighteningly cynical or worryingly naive. Either way, he emerges badly."

Campbell studies the nineteenth-century threat to French wines in Phylloxera: How Wine Was Saved for the World, released in the United States as The Botanist and the Vintner: How Wine Was Saved for the World. In the 1860s, the phylloxera parasite was discovered in the Rhone Valley, and the aphid that was soon discovered to have been imported along with American-grown vines. For thirty years, scientists fought the bug, even offering a reward for the solution, which turned out to be quite simple—introduce American vines that were resistant to phylloxera. The drama includes such figures as French chemist Louis Pasteur and English naturalist Charles Darwin and plays out against other historical events. "Campbell has clearly toiled diligently in the archives and works hard to bring his story alive," wrote an Economist contributor in reviewing Phylloxera.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2002, Margaret Flanagan, review of The Maharajah's Box: An Exotic Tale of Espionage,Intrigue, and Illicit Love in the Days of the Raj, p. 1672.

Contemporary Review, November, 2000, John Knight, review of The Maharajah's Box, p. 311; October, 2002, review of Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria, p. 253.

Economist, May 8, 2004, review of Phylloxera: HowWine Was Saved for the World, p. 80.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2002, review of TheMaharajah's Box, p. 630; November 1, 2003, review of Fenian Fire, p. 1298.

Library Journal, July 4, 1987, Stanley Itkin, review of The World War II Fact Book, 1939-1945, p. 74.

Publishers Weekly, May 20, 2002, review of TheMaharajah's Box, p. 56.

Spectator, June 1, 2002, Jane Ridley, review of FenianFire, p. 42.

Sunday Times (London, England), February 13, 2000, review of The Maharajah's Box, p. 40.

ONLINE

Guardian Unlimited,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (May 26, 2002), Roy Hattersley, review of Fenian Fire: The British Government Plot to Assassinate Queen Victoria.*