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[h3]Gordon Brown became Britain’s 52nd prime minister in June 2007. The taciturn treasurer, who was the longest-serving chancellor in modern British history, now helms the nation.[/h3]

Credited for much of Britain's recent economic boom, Brown was seen posing with a rare smile in front of the doors of No. 10 Downing Street a mere two hours after former PM [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/501:0/Tony_Blair.htm]Tony Blair[/urlnew] vacated. It was a position Brown had coveted for more than a decade.

In little over a month since accepting the [urlnew=http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_home/495:0/Elizabeth_Alexandra_Mary_Windsor_-_Queen_Elizabeth_II.htm]Queen's[/urlnew] invitation to form a Government, the man who stood in the shadow of Blair was put to the test. Since taking up the top job, Brown has seen an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, Britain’s worst floods in 150 years and terrorist attacks.

James Gordon Brown was born in Glasgow, the second of three sons born to Rev Dr John Brown, a Church of Scotland minister and Elizabeth Brown. Though the pair have now passed away, Brown said his parents provided the “moral compass’’ in his life.

The family lived in Glasgow until Gordon was three, when they moved to Kirkcaldy, a small industrial town on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth and the area he represents in Parliament today.

Brown was politically active even as a child. Inspired by one of their father's sermons, Gordon and his older brother John set up a tuck shop in the family's garage and started a newspaper to raise money for refugees. His political affiliations were never in doubt. By the age of 12, he was pushing Labour Party leaflets through letterboxes in Kirkcaldy.

Academically gifted, Brown was fast-tracked at Kirkcaldy High School where he started at the age of 10. He sat his Highers, the Scottish equivalent of A-levels, two years early and was named the school Dux. At the age of 16, he had joined his older brother John at Edinburgh University, becoming the youngest fresher at the university since 1945.

Despite such a promising start, disaster struck when, in his first week of term, an old rugby injury was blamed for leaving him with a detached retina. Brown spent weeks lying in a darkened room and missed the entire first term while doctors battled to save his sight. Brown eventually lost the sight in one eye and it is claimed he retained about 30 per cent vision in the other eye.

Not allowing impaired vision to slow his progress, by his second year of university, Brown followed in the footsteps of his older brother by becoming the editor of The Student magazine. He grabbed national headlines by exposing the university's investments in pro-apartheid South Africa. Then, after graduating with a first in 1972, he launched a successful campaign to become the university's youngest ever Rector.
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During his university days, Brown enjoyed an unlikely romance with an exiled Romanian Princess who was also studying at the university. They broke up after she claimed he was only interested in one thing: politics.

After a spell as a television journalist and producer for STV in Glasgow, Brown won the safe Labour seat of Dunfermline East during the 1983 General Election, at the age of 32. He served there until 2005 when he became MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath after the reorganisation of Scottish constituencies.

A few weeks after entering the Commons, Brown began sharing an office with another new kid on the political block, one Tony Blair, a 30-year-old Islington barrister.

It was a pairing that would eventually dominate British politics. Brown and Blair became friends over a shared vision. Both were convinced Labour had to change if it was ever going to win power in a Conservative-controlled landscape. They quickly became inseparable, bouncing ideas off one other and helping to write each other's speeches. However, in the world of politics there can be only one and the friendship continued with an undercurrent of rivalry.

Two years older than Blair, carrying more of an intellectual CV and with deeper roots in the Labour movement, Brown was seen as the senior of the partnership. When Labour Party leader John Smith died of a heart attack in 1994, both Blair and Brown were considered for the job.

Political legend has it that the two men struck a deal at a London restaurant: Blair would take over as party leader and Brown would get control of the Treasury. Under the deal, Blair was supposed to step down half way through his second term and Brown would take over as Britain's prime minister. In exchange for giving him a clear run at the leadership, Blair promised he would make Brown the most powerful chancellor in history, with unprecedented control over domestic policy.

Like many handshake promises, the deal did not go to plan and as the years passed (with Blair staying on as premier) British newspapers became saturated with rumours of squabbles between the two men.

The goal that united them in the 1990s was to get Labour into power after 18 years in opposition against the Tories, but they were divided by a power struggle. Together they formed a hugely effective campaigning machine and in 1997 Tony Blair swept to power with a landslide.

The biggest flashpoint in Labour's first term was over the Euro. Blair saw it as his destiny to take Britain into the single European currency but Brown, who was less enthusiastic, managed to seize control of the policy.
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Brown turned the Euro issue into an economic rather than a political decision by announcing five economic tests which had to be passed before he would recommend that the issue be put to a public referendum.

After the 2001 general election, relations between the Treasury and Number 10 reportedly deteriorated further. Critics argued that decisions that might ordinarily have been expected to be made by a prime minister were being made at the Treasury.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown presided over the longest ever period of growth. He also made the Bank of England independent and delivered an agreement at the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, supporting the world's poorest countries and helping to tackle climate change.

In the midst of the political push and pull, in 1995, Brown was dating PR executive Sarah Macauley. Sarah has been credited with smartening up Brown's image but it was not until two years later, on the eve of Brown's first Budget in 1997, that their relationship was made public.

At the behest of Brown's spin doctor, it was arranged for the couple to be photographed dining together at a Soho restaurant. Compared with Blair’s happy family image, the coupling helped endear Brown to the public and there was much media interest in his romance.

Friends have claimed Brown has been softened by marriage. The couple wed in Fife in 2000 and honeymooned in Cape Cod, Brown's favourite summer holiday destination.

The couple’s first child, a daughter, Jennifer, tragically suffered a brain haemorrhage and died in her parents' arms after just 10 days. Brown said their dead daughter had transformed his and Sarah's lives twice: “Once by entering our lives, then by leaving.’’

He later told reporters he could not listen to music for a year afterwards as he grieved. In their daughter's memory Sarah Brown founded a charity, Piggy Bank Kids, which helps disadvantaged children. She also established the Jennifer Brown Research Fund in 2002 to help research into pregnancy difficulties. The Browns went on to have two sons, John, born in 2003, and James Fraser, who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis shortly after his birth in 2006. Brown has said he is optimistic about his son's future.

Sarah has appeared on the campaign trail with her husband but has tended to concentrate on her family and charity work.
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In 2003, with Blair’s reputation weakened by a public backlash against the Iraq war, Brown was poised for the top job. With Labour slipping in the polls, Blair brought Brown back to centre stage, making his record of low inflation and high employment, the centrepiece of the campaign. When Blair announced he was standing down Brown seemed odds-on to take over Number 10.

Brown's admirers have described him as intellectually awesome, physically impressive with broad shoulders, morally impeccable and seriously committed. Critics call him dour and a control freak, possessed of "Stalinist ruthlessness".

On Iraq, Brown is expected to keep British troops in Iraq for the near future, and to maintain Britain's strong relationship with America. The Treasury website lists Brown’s outside interests as football, tennis and film.

[b]Timeline:[/b]

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1972: Rector, Edinburgh University[/ul]
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1975: Temporary lecturer
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1976: Politics lecturer, Glasgow College of Technology
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1980: Television journalist, STV current affairs
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1983: Labour MP, Dunfermline East
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1985: Opposition front bench trade and industry spokesman
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1987: Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury
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1989: Shadow trade and industry spokesman
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1992: Shadow chancellor
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1997: Chancellor
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2007: Prime Minister
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[i]Sam Carpenter[/i]
Gordon Brown biography

- In 1972, he became the youngest ever Rector of Edinburgh University.

- Brown was the longest-serving chancellor in modern British history: from 1997 to 2007.

- A kick in the head during a rugby game at high school is blamed for Brown suffering a detatched retina the following year at university. He lost sight in one eye and has poor vision in the other.

- Brown’s first child with wife Sarah died at just 10 days old. Weighing 2lb 4oz, the premature baby girl, Jennifer Jane, died of a brain haemorrhage.

- Whilst Blair was prime minister Brown lived at number ten and the Blairs next door at number eleven, being a bigger property to house the Blairs bigger family.
Gordon Brown biography

Gordon Brown biography