OPINION - Camila Batmanghelidjh was trying to solve London’s knife crime epidemic, shame on those who brought her down

Camila Batmanghelidjh, who founded the globally renowned, London-based and entirely besmirched — but ultimately exonerated — Kids Company died peacefully on New Year’s Day aged 61. It is my sincere belief that we Londoners will rue the day she suffered what she described to me as her “reputational assassination”, which brought down the charity she set up to help the capital’s most disadvantaged children escape lives of gangs and violence.

I interviewed Batmanghelidjh in her tiny flat in West Hampstead in 2019, while researching a book about public figures who had been brought down by scandals, and was struck by the highly convincing precision of her vision of how we should tackle the growing problem of youth deprivation in our capital.

At the height of her success Batmanghelidjh was known as the “Angel of Peckham”. Her charity raised tens of millions of pounds from celebrity donors and the Government, helping tens of thousands of disadvantaged children. She became the poster child for ’s Big Society, and a glimmer of hope for children who were being failed by the state. Her charity