Background
He was born in Dingwall, Scotland, as a son of the overseer of gardens and dells for Lord and Lady Seaforth, heirs to the Braham Castle Estates.
He was born in Dingwall, Scotland, as a son of the overseer of gardens and dells for Lord and Lady Seaforth, heirs to the Braham Castle Estates.
He was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records during the 1980s as one of the world"s greatest living linguists, could speak and write fluently in at least 44 languages and had a working knowledge of perhaps 20 others The Campbell family lived on the main estate, near the castle. They relegated him to the back of the classroom and ignored him, which allowed him to devour language books on his own.
Sitting in the back of the classroom, he taught himself Spanish and Italian before learning French and German at secondary school.
He found his language books burrowing through secondhand bookstalls at a fish market. He studied German at the University of Leipzig and mastered eight other languages from fellow students who had come to Leipzig from Central and Eastern Europe.
In 1937, he received a degree in librarianship from London University and became assistant librarian in the School of Slavonic Studies. With the outbreak of World World War II in 1939, Mr.
Campbell was called to the military but was immediately transferred to the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service as a language supervisor.
He retired in 1974 as head of the Romanian Service. Living in retirement in Brighton, he taught himself classical Chinese, Basque, and several other languages. He also translated academic works, mainly from Russian and German.
Mr.
Campbell also played piano and taught himself tensor calculus. ("I wanted to know what the cosmologists were talking about," he told a former British Broadcasting Corporation colleague)
"All said that his knowledge was not only adequate but amazing," Mikes wrote. He died of pneumonia on December 15 2004 in Brighton, England, at the age of 92.