Colin Robert Vaughan Campbell, 7th Earl Cawdor, DL (born 30 June 1962), styled Viscount Emlyn from 1970–93, is a Scottish peer, landowner, and architect. A member of the House of Lords from 1993–99, he is Vice-Lord Lieutenant of Nairnshire.

Life

Born in Carmarthen, Cawdor is the elder son of Hugh John Vaughan Campbell, 6th Earl Cawdor, and his first wife Cathryn Hinde, a daughter of Major-General Sir Robert Hinde, and was educated at Eton College and St Peter's College, Oxford. On his father's death in 1993, he succeeded him as Earl Cawdor of Castlemartin, Viscount Emlyn, of Emlyn, and Baron Cawdor of Castlemartin. He also inherited a Scottish estate of some 50,000 acres and Cawdor Castle, which is one of the locations of the Shakespeare play Macbeth. In 2006, he launched a project called "New Future for Nairn", recalling that the town of Nairn had once been popular for seaside holidays and known as "the Brighton of the North". In 2007, came more detailed plans to develop 274 acres of land at Delnies, on the outskirts of the town, for new housing, a sports centre, and an arts centre.

Personal life

On 21 October 1994, at Adare, County Limerick, Lord Cawdor married Lady Isabella Stanhope, youngest daughter of William Stanhope, 11th Earl of Harrington. She was a Vogue fashion editor who has since become an interior decorator. They have four children: In 2001, Lord Cawdor clashed with his stepmother, Angelika Campbell, Countess Cawdor, when she tried to have him evicted from the castle, so that she could continue to occupy it. In 2005, he and his wife and children were living at Drynachan Lodge, an eight-bedroom hunting lodge by the River Findhorn. In 2007, as "Earl Colin & Countess Isabella of Cawdor", Vogue listed the Cawdors among its best-dressed couples. On 23 June 2013, The New York Times quoted Lord Cawdor's elder sister Lady Liza Campbell in an article which described male-preference primogeniture as a legacy form of sexism.