US Edition THE 12th DUKE OF ARGYLL, who has died suddenly aged 63, was Chief of Clan Campbell and Scotland's second most senior duke; since 1996 he had been Lord Lieutenant of Argyll and Bute.
On succeeding to the dukedom on his father's death in 1973, the Duke was obliged to meet colossal demands for estate duty, and two years later was faced with a devastating fire - the second in 150 years - at his ancestral seat, Inveraray Castle, on Loch Fyne, the 15th-century stronghold of the Campbells rebuilt by the 5th Duke of Argyll as an Adam palace in the 18th century.
Putting a brave face on the fire - and on the loss of, among other treasures, a magnificent painting by Gainsborough - the Duke recalled his much-loved mother's pragmatism, and was thankful she had instilled in him her belief that material things are of little value. He had been brought up, he said, never to count on anything but what he could himself achieve.
Rather than despair, he launched a worldwide appeal for £850,000 to restore the castle. Fund-raising organisations were set up in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and before long money was pouring in.
For some months the Duke and Duchess and their two young children lived in the castle basement with no electricity or running water, working all hours to restore the fabric of Inveraray. Three years after the fire, in 1978, the Duke was able to reopen the castle to the public, and was soon welcoming as many as 100,000 visitors a year.
Ian Campbell was born on August 28 1937, the elder son of Ian Douglas Campbell - who would become the 11th Duke of Argyll on the death of his cousin the 10th Duke in 1949 - and his second wife Louise, only daughter of the American Henry Clews. (The 11th Duke would divorce Ian's mother in 1951 and marry, as his third wife, Margaret Sweeny, nee Whigham, who would become best known to the world as Margaret, Duchess of Argyll.)
The Campbell family descends from Gillespic Cambel, who some nine centuries ago acquired lands in the barony of Lochow, Co Argyll, by marriage to his cousin Aife, daughter and heir of Paul an Sporran, Royal Treasurer and last of the Clan O'Duin, descended of Diarmid.
From the 13th century the Lochow Campbells held the title of Mac Cailein Mhor, Chief of Clan Campbell. In 1291, Sir Colin Campbell, of Lochow, was one of the nominees, on the part of Robert the Bruce, in the contest for the Crown of Scotland. Sir Duncan Campbell, of Lochow, became a Lord of Parliament as Lord Campbell under James II in 1445. His son Colin, the 2nd Lord Campbell, was created Earl of Argyll in 1457. The 10th Earl was advanced to the rank of Duke in the peerage of Scotland in 1701.
Ian Campbell was brought up in Portugal and France; when, aged 11, he first visited Inveraray, he recalled that he could barely speak English. He was schooled at Le Rosey, in Switzerland (in later life he still did mental arithmetic in French), and at Glenalmond, before going to Canada to read Engineering at McGill University, Montreal. From the time of his father's succession to the dukedom in 1949, he was styled by courtesy Marquess of Lorne.
After four years' service with the 1st Battalion, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (his father's old regiment), Lord Lorne worked for two years, from 1963 to 1965, with the First National City Bank in London. Subsequently, he spent four years as a sales executive with Rank Xerox Export, travelling behind the Iron Curtain to East Germany, Hungary and Romania; he was one of the first to sell photocopiers in the Soviet Union.
By 1968, his father had wearied of looking after Inveraray, and somewhat unexpectedly decamped to Paris. Consequently, although it did not especially suit them, Lord Lorne and his young family moved from London up to Inveraray, where he took over the running of the 70,000-acre estate.
On the death of his father five years later, he succeeded to a clutch of titles, which aside from the dukedom included those of Hereditary Master of the Royal Household, Scotland, and Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. In addition, he was Keeper of Dunoon, Carrick, Dunstaffnage and Tarbert castles.
He was also Admiral of the Western Coast and Isles, a sinecure that entitled him to an 18-gun salute should he board the warship Argyll.
The new Duke soon realised that he had to find ways of subsidising the upkeep of Inveraray. Although some income came from grouse shooting, salmon fishing and stalking, in 1979 he was forced to sell the Hebridean island of Iona, the cradle of the Scottish church, which had belonged to the Argylls since 1695. It was eventually bought for the nation by the Hugh Fraser Foundation for £1,500,000.
The Duke also attempted to exploit salvage rights to a Spanish Armada galleon which had gone down in Tobermory Bay with a cargo of gold estimated at £30 million. Navy divers found the wreck in 1975, but the treasure proved elusive. A more concrete success was a range of Argyll signature whiskies, which eventually led to the acquisition of three distilleries and the creation of 250 jobs.
The Duke was a member of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers, from 1967 to 1994, and was honorary Sheriff of Oban in 1997. He was a loyal supporter of the Highland Games in Oban and Inveraray, and as Lord Lieutenant was a familiar figure at county gatherings.
Both the Duke and Duchess were keen divers; she had introduced him to the sport while they were on honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. They had dived all over the world - from the Caribbean to the South China Sea - but the Duke claimed to have found nowhere as idyllic to swim from as the local white sand beaches of Tiree. The Duchess would go diving in the waters of Argyll most weeks, often bringing home scallops for supper.
Ian Campbell married, in 1964, Iona Mary, daughter of Captain Ivar Colquhoun; they had a son and a daughter. The son, Torquhil, Marquess of Lorne, who was born in 1968, succeeds to the dukedom.