Product Description

Blue-Eyed Son is Nicky Campbell's startling, candid and extraordinary story of his search to find his natural parents - and to discover exactly where he came from.

Raised in a comfortable middle-class home, his Scottish Protestant family cared for him and nurtured him as their own, while remaining open about the fact he'd been adopted. His father - an ex-army man - and his psychiatric social worker mother helped him to a good school, a good university and then on to a successful career in the media. Nicky rarely thought of his birth parents, until a combination of an imploding marriage and a chance meeting with a private detective led him to track his mother down.

Nicky Campbell brilliantly describes their reunion and tentative steps towards a relationship, evoking all the complex and deep-seated emotions that being reunited elicited in each of them. But as they talked it became clear that there was more to Nicky's background than he expected. He learned he had a sister, Esther, who, like him, had been given for adoption in Edinburgh and with whom he would forge a close bond.

Of his natural father, his mother revealed few details, save that he had been a young Irish Catholic policeman. It was not until several years had passed that Nicky felt ready to trace him, too. When he did so, he found a committed Republican whose own father had served in the IRA at the time of Michael Collins. This clash of cultures and blurring of identity forced Nicky to re-examine his life, to look again at why he acted the way that he did. Always in the back of his mind the question: Am I really like him?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161331 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

The Independent
'An extraordinary story'

The Scotsman
Astonishingly honest...one man's set of raw, moving and resonant truths.

Vanessa Feltz, BBC London
'The most remarkable book you'll ever read by a TV presenter ... beautifully written'

Customer Reviews

ruthless enquiry
Nicky Campbell has employed the same ruthless approach to the research for his biological parents that he uses in his interviews for radio and television. What makes his book such a compelling read, is his preparedness to share his faults and shortcomings, his fears and emotions with the reader. I thoroughly recommend this book as an unusual mix of well researched social history and ad hoc personal searching for the truth behind his parentage.

Blue-eyed Son
This book is profoundly moving; nothing less than that. I read it
recently and was just having a peek at Amazon to add my tuppence worth. In my experience, and I have some. there is a regrettable tendency for someself appointed adoption 'experts' to arrogate omniscience on the subject and rather haughtily dismiss as heretical anyone who doesn¹t adhere to their own narrow orthodoxy. Fundamentalism is a dangerous thing and there are a lot off zealots in the adoption world who see things through glasses fitted for their eyes only. Some of the counselling an adopted friend has had over the years beggars belief but that is another story.A few years ago she embarked on the same quest as Campbell to trace and find and so much in the book chimes completely with her own story, fears, feelings and sense of confusion as to be uncanny. When she lent me the book she mentioned the song,Killing Me Softly ­ 'I felt he¹d seen my letters and read them all out loud', it was like that she said. These are for sure beguiling events which evidently clear up confusion, answer questions but create psychological chaos unless you are very lucky. Imagine meeting the stranger who gave birth to you? I am no huge fan of the kind of programmes Campbell presents but in print he has a very sure and warm voice. The book is well written and you can tell the guy is a professional communicator. He certainly has his faults but the book's great strength is that in it he refuses to deny them shirk from those faults. I am glad my friend made me read it. Now I understand her a little bit more. This 'everyman' tale is about a human being. I can¹t recommend it highly enough
Glen from lincolnshire

Blue-Eyed Son - disappointing
The author is a radio and television personality in the United Kingdom. As a resident of Australia, however, I had never heard of him before reading his book. Campbell tells his story of growing up as an adopted child in Edinburgh and of his search, as an adult, for his blood relatives.
I found the book difficult to read on several levels. Campbell may have attended an expensive private school, but they clearly did not teach him to write in sentences. Sadly, they also did not teach him how to spell and he has not even mastered the use of the spell-checker. If he paid someone to edit his book, then I believe that he is entitled to a refund. If he didn't, then it suggests that he has a misplaced faith in his own abilities. In books about adoption there is always the potential for confusion between the natural family and the adoptive family. Campbell's book would have been easier to read if there had been more clarity around the use of the terms describing family relationships. On a positive note, his book certainly appears to be very honest and it is heartening to read a book written by a man who is able to describe his feelings so articulately. However, I frequently cringed at his lack of understanding of the dynamics of adoption separation and reunion. Sadly, in his ignorance, he perpetuates unhelpful adoption myths.
Many times I wanted to put the book down and read no more, but, as an author, I know how frustrating it is when readers pass judgment on my books without reading them in their entirety and so I soldiered on. Although I experienced many frustrations while reading "Blue-Eyed Son", I have to admit that I enjoyed his references to Edinburgh which he describes as " ... a place that never leaves your heart. If you've got one". I also lived in Edinburgh and, like Stella, Campbell's natural mother, my first child was born and adopted there.
I found it distressing to read that Campbell feels that, had he not been adopted, but instead raised among his original family members, his life would have been `ruined'. Of course, no one could possibly know how his life might have been, had the adoption not taken place. He may well have enjoyed a happy and fulfilled life, full of love, encouragement and acceptance far away from the self-absorbed, materialistic snobbery of "the Edinburgh middle-class mafia" which he describes. He also could have avoided in his own life the issues faced by many who are adopted, which he illustrates so clearly, such as insecurity, identity confusion, need for approval and fear of rejection and abandonment.
The men in "Blue-Eyed Son" are generally described vividly and with admiration. The women in Campbell's life receive less attention. Of his half-sister, Esther, he says, in Chapter 21, "I'd treated her like a staging post on my journey that was now miles behind me. She didn't deserve that." Sadly, he appears to have treated his natural mother, Stella, in the same manner, without, however, acknowledging his behaviour towards her and addressing it. Of his natural father, Joseph, he says, at the end of Chapter 19, "I have no right to judge him. Just a duty to understand. He is my father." I was saddened throughout the book to find that he did not seem to accord the same courtesy to his mother. While he writes at length and with passion about Joseph, his references to Stella are generally cursory and lacking in affection.

Adoption is based on fabrication and denial. The adopted child is issued with a second birth certificate, which allows the pretence that he or she is actually the child of the adopters. Campbell seems to have spent a large part of his life perpetuating this fabrication and denial, as he concealed the fact that he had contacted his relatives from members of his adoptive family, assuming that they would not share his joy and excitement. In recent years he seems to have reached some understanding of the fact that natural family members and adoptive family members each have their place in his life, however and that there is no need for them to compete. I believe that if he had prepared himself more appropriately for the contact with his relatives, the experience could have been less harrowing and more satisfying for all involved.

Any book about adoption is useful in educating the community. However, more knowledge and insight coupled with better editing would have made this book not only more enjoyable to read, but also more enlightening to its readers.