FRANCES CAMPBELL-PRESTON was born in 1918, and is a younger daughter of the banker, Arthur Grenfell and his wife, Hilda Lyttelton. She was educated at St Paul’s School. In 1938 she married Patrick Campbell-Preston, a young officer in the Black Watch. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Patrick was captured and eventually imprisoned in Colditz Castle. Frances served as an ‘immobile’ Wren in Scotland from 1941 to 1943.After the war, they raised their young family, Patrick briefly commanding his regiment before ill-health brought his military career to an end. Following Patrick’s death in 1960, Frances was appointed a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, serving from 1965 until the Queen Mother’s death in 2002. She was created a DCVO in 1990. She was a member of Argyll County Council from 1960 to 1964 and Chairman of the Children’s Panel, Argyll and Bute, from 1970 to 1980. Dame Frances now lives in London and Scotland and is a great-grandmother. Her bestselling autobiography, The Rich Spoils of Time, was published by the Dovecote Press in 2006. She is now 96 years old.

 

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