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RUGGED, handsome and fun-loving, the Duke of Argyll had been held prisoner of war by the Nazis for five years and had been unlucky in love.

Twice divorced, he first met millionaire's daughter, and divorcee, Margaret Whigham on a blind date in London.

Pretty and witty, this sought-after socialite had been a stunning debutante. One of the most photographed women of her day, she was highly intelligent and mixed in Royal circles.

Her butler, Simpson, welcomed house guests including Noel Coward, Cary Grant and John Paul Getty to her Mayfair home. And she sipped cocktails with stars such as Lauren Bacall, Deborah Kerr and Joan Collins.

One day she needed an extra companion for a lunch and someone suggested Ian Douglas Campbell.

They clicked and on March 22, 1951, they married at Caxton Hall Register Office. He took her north to his ancestral seat, posing for pictures carrying her over the threshold and into her new life at Inveraray Castle.

But within a few years, the marriage was crumbling. Divorce papers were filed in 1959 and, after a sensational 11- day hearing, the Duke got his divorce on the grounds of her adultery. And details of her salacious behaviour inside the Georgian house her father left to her at 48 Upper Grosvenor Street were laid bare.

She was pilloried as a high-class harlot in a four-and-a-half hour judgement read out by Lord Wheatley who said: "She is a highlysexed woman who has ceased to be satisfied with normal sexual activities and has started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite.

"A completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied by a number of men, whose promiscuity had extended to perversion and whose attitude to the sanctity of marriage was what moderns would call enlightened, but which in plain language was wholly immoral."

Far away from the oak-panelled Court of Session, the Duchess was in Paris - at the exclusive salon of Jacques Griffe for a dress fitting - as the words were read out on Wednesday, May 8, 1963.

And she intended to carry on living as she had always done - despite the destruction of her character and reputation.

This remarkable lady was born Ethel Margaret Whigham in December 1912.

Her parents George and Helen had a modest background. He was a £1.50-a-week engineering apprentice who worked his way up to become head of a huge textiles combine. The family moved to New York but returned to Scotland for Margaret's birth and she was then privately educated in the US - returning to London in 1930 as a deb.

Briefly engaged to the 7th Earl of Warwick, she was just 20 when she married US amateur golfer Charles Sweeny and had two children - a son and a daughter, who was to later also marry an aristocrat, the Duke of Rutland.

During World War II, her life was changed forever when she tumbled down a lift shaft visiting her chiropodist in Bond Street. She said: "I fell 40ft to the bottom and cracked the back of my head against the wall."

Her marriage then fell apart and divorce followed. She got engaged to a Texan banker and had numerous relationships before she met the Duke.

As Mrs Sweeny, her life had been one long party, mixing with royalty, politicians and showbiz stars.

She wrote: "I had wealth, I had good looks. As a young woman I had been constantly photographed, written about, flattered, admired, and was included in the 10 Best-Dressed Women in the World list. I was also mentioned by Cole Porter in the words of his hit song You're the Top.

"The top was what I was supposed to be. I had become a duchess and mistress of an historic castle. My daughter had married aduke. Life was apparently roses all the way."

The Duke himself had not lived a quiet life and had a reputation as a heavy-drinking gambler. In all, he married four times.

His first wedding, in December 1927, was to Janet Gladys Aitken - daughter of the Press baron Lord Beaverbrook. They met in a casino when he was 24 and she was just 17.

They had a daughter, Lady Jeanne, who went on to marry American writer Norman was told her parents' marriage got off to an inauspicious start after the groom took his bride to a brothel for a demonstration of marital duties.

The marriage was doomed from the start.

He gambled and Janet later remembered him as "long on charm but short on judgment at the gaming tables".

The couple divorced in 1934 and he remarried Louise Hollingsworth Morris Clews in November the following year.

They had two sons - an heir Iain and Colin Ivar - before they divorced in 1951, on the grounds of his adultery with Margaret.

To outsiders, his third marriage seemed an ideal match. But, in reality, it wasn't.

By early 1954, he accused her of a string of affairs. And he claimed that by the start of 1959, she had admitted her infidelity.

As the relationship soured, a welter of court cases were launched.

And he put a bolt on his bedroom door to stop her getting in.

He later won an order banning her from Inveraray Castle. She challenged it and the public got a taste of how the fairytale marriage had turned into a nightmare.

In response to his allegations of adultery, she claimed he drank to excess, assaulted her and refused to speak to her. She also claimed many of the valuables in Inveraray were hers under a deed of gift made by him.

The Duke claimed she had gone to the castle when he was away and brought a locksmith and ironmonger to help her get into his study, broke records, took an oil painting, photo albums and two boomerangs.

She was finally granted permission for a one-day visit to the castle to pick up personal items. Warmly greeted by her pets, she left with 500 records, a wooden ashtray, a tartan cloth and an engraved paper knife.

The Duchess, now 45, also took court action against the Duke's daughter, Lady Jeanne, for trespass after she gained unauthorised entry to the Mayfair house and seized personal property.

This raid was key to the divorce because the Duke got his hands on his wife's four-year diaries and the compromising photographs.

The diary entries were explicit about her affairs, but the Polaroids - taken in her bathroom - were explosive.

Wearing nothing but a string of pearls she was seen performing a sex act on a man whose head was cropped out of the photographs.

There were also pictures of what turned out later to be a second, naked headless man.

Armed with this evidence, the Duke sued for divorce in October 1959.

Allegation followed allegation in an incredible war-of-words that kept the lawyers fully employed.

The Duchess raised the stakes by questioning the legitimacy of her stepson - the Duke's son and heir. The ex-wife and the heir sued as a result.

The Duke wanted to quash rumours. The Duchess denied she had spread any, and an injunction was granted peaceably - but it didn't silence her for long.

As the Duke pursued his adultery claims, she cross-petitioned and alleged that he was having an affair with her own step-mother - Mrs Jane Whigham, 47. She eventually withdrew the preposterous claims and paid out £25,000 when she was sued.

After three years of wrangling, the case was finally heard over 11 days in 1962 and it wasn't until May 1963 that judge Lord Wheatley issued his damning verdict.

While the Duke had originally listed 88 possible lovers, the judge found she had committed adultery with three.

JOHN COHANE: Describing the American businessman who she met in New York, the judge stated: "A man who admitted he had the morals of a tomcat ... a self-confessed wolf ... and a man who carried out a campaign of lechery. He was a brash voluble man trying to take himself out of the arms of the incriminating situation of his own making."

HARVEY COMBE: Former press officer for the Savoy Hotel, London, who lived in Ross-shire, was described as "an unreliable witness" and had sex with her in London and Spain.

SIGISMUND VON BRAUN: A German diplomat, whose letters were regarded as sufficient evidence to prove adultery.

However, the identity of those in the pictures was not revealed in court.

Lord Wheatley also slammed the Duke, who had admitted showing pornographic pictures to people at a party in New York, stating: "I do not commend his tastes or habits."

He reserved his sharpest condemnation for the Duchess: "Her explanations were unconvincing ... she was lying. She seemed to me to be a malicious woman."

Lord Wheatley granted the divorce ending 12 years of an explosive marriage.

After the divorce, the Duke wed, for the fourth time, to American Mathilda Costa Mortimer and they remained married until he died of a stroke in 1973 at the age of 69.

The Duchess continued to go to St Moritz for skiing, Nassau for sailing and the south of France for sun.

But her capital was depleted by high living and litigation.

She died penniless, in her sleep, in a nursing home in 1993. She was 80.

The diary entries were explicit about her affairs, but the Polaroids - taken in her bathroom - were explosive