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Heather Mills , a former model and anti-land mines campaigner, is best known for marrying Sir Paul McCartney of the Beatles in 2002, four years after Linda McCartney died of breast cancer. Mills and McCartney had their first child, Beatrice Milly, in October 2003.

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Her personal life prior to her marriage to Paul McCartney was fairly colourful: homelessness, one previous marriage (to computer sales director Alfie Karmal), two ectopic pregnancies and two fiancés.

In 1990, she moved to what was then northern Yugoslavia (now Slovenia), where she saw the unfolding civil war first-hand. Over the following two years she modelled to raise funds for refugees of the war, and commuted between Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and England.

In August 1993, she was hit by a police motorcycle while crossing the road; her injuries included crushed ribs, a punctured lung, a metal plate needing to be put in her pelvis and the amputation of her left leg below the knee. She later sold her story of her recovery following the accident to a British tabloid, with details of how she and her boyfriend made love in her hospital bed.

Following the accident she arranged for unwanted prostheses to be sent from the United Kingdom to the war-torn former Yugoslavia.

Although few dispute her charisma or many of the main events in her biography, Heather Mills McCartney has been criticised in several newspapers, such as the Sunday Times, for what has been described as embellishments to her life story, and questioning the effectiveness of her charitable work in the Balkans. An article in the Sunday Times in 2004 drew an angry response from husband Paul McCartney on Heather's website. She has also come under criticism from many within the disabled community for proclaiming to speak on their behalf.

Heather Mills married Paul McCartney in June 2002 in an elaborate ceremony at a castle in rural Ireland. She is currently a United Nations Association Goodwill Ambassador.

In addition to promoting distribution of prostheses worldwide, she has been involved with the development of the [1] [2] "to give amputees in America a chance to wear a Dorset Orthopaedic cosmesis without the need to visit us here in the UK".

Heather and Paul McCartney are both patrons of Adopt-A-Minefield, and proceeds from her updated autobiography,