Linda McCartney - Wonderful Woman No. 64

Linda McCartney - 1941–1998
American Photographer, Musician, Animal Rights Activist, Culinary Writer and Business Woman

There are so many things I could write about Linda McCartney's life and many, many reasons why she should be included as a wonderful woman. It seems a shame then, that the thing she was most famous for was her marriage to a member of The Beatles.

When I was eight years old, I realised that meat came from animals and I stopped eating it. My parents thought it was a phase, I am now thirty-something and haven't had a slice of ham since. Back then, nobody really knew what a vegetarian was, eating in restaurants was a nightmare and soya was yet to enter the vocabulary of my provincial Lancashire town. Linda was a real vegetarian food pioneer, she wrote meat-free cookbooks and started her own food company with the ethos of 'celebrating life through food'. I would still have been a vegetarian without her but I do believe she made some headway in bringing an understanding of the meat-free diet into the public conciousness. And for that, I think she is truly wonderful.

While her work as a poster-girl for vegetarianism is my main reason for adding her to this album, there are a great many other reasons to include her...

Linda was a fabulous photographer, in the sixties and seventies she pictured the likes of The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and, of course, The Beatles.

I have always marvelled at Linda and Paul McCartney's relationship. They were married after knowing each other for six months, had four children together and I once read that after their wedding day, they never spent a night apart until the day she died.

She was unique and the world is a better place for having known her.
Paul McCartney

It was through Paul that Linda became involved in music. The couple both appeared in Paul's post-Beatles band Wings. And they were both nominated for an Academy Award for their joint composition of the James Bond theme Live and Let Die.

I doubt I have written all that is wonderful about Linda in the few short paragraphs of this blog... but she was incredibly wonderful in so many ways.

I don't need a lot of money... simplicity is the answer for me.
Linda McCartney