Liz Truss will travel to Balmoral later on Tuesday to accept the role of prime minister from the Queen, having been crowned leader of the Conservative Party.
Born to left-wing parents, and formerly a committed Liberal Democrat, Ms Truss has defied convention with her political rise.
Throughout the leadership race, she has sought to emphasis the contrast between her own upbringing and that of her privately-educated rival, Rishi Sunak.
Here’s what you need to know.
Where is Liz Truss from?
Liz Truss was born in Oxford in 1975 to parents she has described as “left of Labour”.
As a child, her mother, a nurse, took Ms Truss on marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which protested against Margaret Thatcher’s decision to allow the United States to deploy cruise missiles at Greenham Common airbase in Berkshire. Her father is a mathematics professor, currently working at Leeds University.
The family moved to Paisley, near Glasgow, when Ms Truss was four, living there from 1979 to 1985, as she attended West Primary School. In a BBC interview, she recalled shouting “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – oot, oot, oot,” in a Scottish accent on marches.
The family then moved the leafy Leeds suburb of Roundhay, where Ms Truss attended the Roundhay School.
At the launch of her economic plan, the former Foreign Secretary described seeing “children who failed and were let down by low expectations” during her time at Roundhay in the 90s.
Ms Truss’s comments were rubbished by supporters of her Tory leadership rival Rishi Sunak, who pointed out that the school was ranked very highly when she attended.
Fabian Hamilton, the MP for Leeds North East, which includes Roundhay school, since 1997, said Truss “has shown she knows little about” the area.
While a former pupil told The Guardian: “These comments are particularly disrespectful to a brilliant team of teachers.
“My mum worked long hours in a specialist learning unit at Roundhay, helping provide extra support to allow pupils with learning difficulties the same opportunities as their classmates.
“This was one of very few such services to be provided in schooling at the time, one of the first of its kind. Far from being a school that ‘failed’ students, Roundhay was and still is a great source of pride.”
Ms Truss also told in an an article in the Telegraph how she grew up in the “heart of the Red Wall” in Leeds and described having “low expectations and… lack of opportunity”.
Her comments came despite an average price for a detached home in the area costing £572,000 and on average families earning £55,700 a year, according to Rightmove.
Ms Truss went on to read philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University, where she became president of the university’s Liberal Democrats.
