Liz Truss: Fast tracker who landed prime cabinet role

At the age of 46, Liz Truss has become the UK's second female foreign secretary - following a trail blazed previously only by Labour's Margaret Beckett 15 years ago.

In a relatively short time in Parliament, she has held a wide variety of posts, dealing with high-profile domestic and international issues.

But her new role will bring a new level of scrutiny, as her predecessor Dominic Raab found when he faced widespread criticism for remaining on holiday during the Afghanistan crisis.

Ms Truss, who has a husband and two daughters, has plenty of big issues in her Foreign Office in-tray, her promotion coming at a time when China, Russia, the UK's place in a post-Brexit world and Iran's nuclear programme are provoking many questions in diplomatic circles.

Born in Oxford in 1975, Ms Truss describes her parents, a mathematics professor and a nurse, as "left-wing".

It was not a characteristic inherited by their daughter.

She moved to Paisley, in Scotland, aged four, and, in 1983 - in a hint of her future political proclivities - played the part of Margaret Thatcher in a school dramatic production.

The family then decamped to Leeds, where she attended a state secondary school.

Mrs Truss went on to Oxford University, where she read philosophy, politics and economics and was active in student politics, initially for the Liberal Democrats and later for the Conservatives.

Afterwards she worked as an accountant for Shell, and Cable & Wireless, but her heart was set on Westminster.

She was the Tory candidate for Hemsworth and Calder Valley in the 2001 and 2005 general elections, failing to win either seat. But she was elected as a councillor on Greenwich, south-east London, in 2006, from 2008 also working as deputy director of the right-of-centre Reform think tank.

Part of Conservative leader David Cameron's "A-list" of priority candidates, Ms Truss was finally elected MP for for the safe Tory seat of South West Norfolk in 2010, with a 13,140-vote majority.

While in Parliament she co-authored a book called Britannia Unchained, which recommended stripping back state regulation to boost the UK's position in the world, marking her out as a prominent advocate of free market policies on the Tory benches.

In 2012, just over two years after becoming an MP, she entered government as an education minister.

She clashed with Lib Dem Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg over schools reform, but Mr Cameron promoted her to the cabinet in 2014, as environment secretary.

At the 2015 Conservative conference, Ms Truss was mocked for giving an speech including an impassioned section on UK cheese imports., but this did not impede her progress.

In 2016, she became justice secretary under Theresa May, the following year moving on to become chief secretary to the Treasury, a position at the heart of the government's economic programme.

After Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019, Ms Truss was moved to international trade secretary - a job which means meeting political and business leaders to promote UK PLC.

As foreign secretary she will rack up just as many, if not more, air miles, with an awful lot more people watching her every move.