His father, John Brown, was from a family of tenant farmers but had gained degrees in divinity and theology at St Andrews University, and had then become a minister in Govan on the Clyde, where he served among people trapped in profound poverty. John married Jessie Elizabeth Souter in 1947, and Gordon's older brother John was born the next year. Gordon was born in Glasgow on 20th February 1951. It was three years after that, that John Brown moved to Fife to become minister of St Brycedale Presbyterian Church in Kirkcaldy.

Gordon Brown's father had a good reputation as a very committed christian with a social conscience. From him, Gordon came to value the principles of serving the community, and the importance of opportunity for people to make something of their lives. As a son of the Manse, "You found out quickly about life and death and the meaning of poverty, injustice and unemployment." "I was very impressed with my father... He taught me to treat everyone equally and that is something I have not forgotten." "Being brought up as the son of a minister made me aware of community responsibilities that any decent society ought to accept."

The father encouraged his sons to condemn inequalities and unfair distribution of wealth. To coin a phrase used by Tom Bower, a biographer of Gordon Brown, the Brown sons were urged 'to conduct their lives with a sense of mission, duty and benign austerity.' This 'benign austerity' may sometimes appear to be an abiding characteristic of Britain's Prime Minister.

From an early age, Gordon Brown showed significant intellectual promise and potential. After attending the local primary school at Kirkcaldy West (near the declining linoleum factory and in stark contrast to the childhood privilege of his political rival David Cameron) he was fast-tracked into the town's grammar school, Kirkcaldy High. From these early days, shoulder to shoulder with children from some really deprived backgrounds, he gained access to unforgettable family memories of ordinary people who in the recent past had had to go without medical treatment in the days before the National Health Service because of inability to pay.

Gordon Brown was highly intelligent but also very keen on sport. His was not a purely bookish, detached intelligence. Football (soccer) in particular was his great enthusiasm. He would earn pocket money selling match programmes of his local team, Raith Rovers, before watching the games.

At the age of fifteen he obtained top grades in his Highers (similar to English 'A' Levels) and gained a place at Edinburgh University. In Britain's new Prime Minister we have someone who has a profound intelligence as well as social humility and acute awareness of real life from the deprived bottom upwards. He was not like his political counterpart David Cameron, enjoying the exclusive privileges of Eton with a coterie of upper class friends, cut off from the indignities of poverty and social neglect. I feel quite strongly about that, although this website will sometimes be quite challenging in its approach, and by no means uncritical or unquestioning or easily satisfied by the spin and 'front' that Brown - like other politicians - will use when it suits him.

At the outset of his university course, Brown faced a real health problem after a sporting accident, and suffered detached retinas in both eyes. Frustrated operations resulted in six months in a darkened room, the loss of sight in his left eye, and the real possibility that he might be left completely blind. It became a time of re-appraisal. Possibly around this time he lost confidence about biblical authority, at one level at least. Concepts like damnation and predestination seemed to be unpallatable. Since this time of loneliness and the threat of blindness, he has referred little if at all to Christianity as a support to his political objectives, though there is a strong sense that the christian origins of his family remain a huge influence in his outlook in terms of the imperative to care about 'your neighbour' or consider those in need. The accompanying dogma, however, is nowhere to be see - at least in public.

One other aspect of his injury was the deadening of some facial muscles, resulting in some constraints on a natural smile, and a sometimes rather dour, austere appearance. So this was quite a challenge to overcome, and yet he returned to university life with new resolve and determination.

He shared a house in Edinburgh with five or six other students, and he was famously untidy. The next year, 1969, he joined the Labour Party and in his second year at university he had already been elected 'chairman' of the Labour Club, showing signs of the political leadership that was to follow. There was quite a male culture to his group, with a strong social interest in watching rugby and football matches. In the same period he became editor of the student newspaper and worked extremely hard towards the outstanding first-class honours degree that he was to achieve.

In 1970 he became actively involved in leading a challenge to the university authorities (and the Edinburgh establishment) over the issue of Edinburgh University's investments in South Africa. He exposed the seeming duplicity of the university who, while claiming an ethical position, in fact continued to invest in companies with terrible employment practices. In the end, this struggle saw Brown elected (soon after graduation) as rector of Edinburgh University, presiding over its courts.

In 1972 he gained a degree of the highest calibre in History and was still only 20 years old when he started work on a doctorate on the Labour Party and Politics in Scotland. His own political views were reasoned, analytical and pragmatic rather than revolutionary. Nevertheless, in his research he was clearly impressed by the romantic idealism and vision of earlier figures in Scottish socialism, who preached against capitalism and dreamed of a better society: people like James Maxton, a crusading orator who - however - was politically frustrated by his inability to compromise his principles. This was a lesson which Gordon Brown took on board for his own political future: unelectability could not bring about the changes that one might passionately desire. Pragmatism was vital, and romanticism and vision should be what fuelled and inspired your aspirations, without taking over as practical goals that deterred voters and kept you locked out of office forever.

As with his evolving response to christianity, the impulse of idealism had to defer to the logistics of what was practical, realistic, and achievable. Neither religious nor political fundamentalism were - for Brown - necessarily valid if you wanted to deal in realities and the world as it actually was and really effect change that might be - without trying to sound religious or sentimental - the outworking of love. Yet the impulse and the emotion, I suspect, still lurks though largely hidden, in the heart of Gordon Brown - and motivates the hours and years of analysis, political manoeuvering, and practical struggle to gain power and put that power to decent effect.

Gordon Brown's forty year quest for executive power has finally brought him the top post in British politics. The question then follows: to what extent is he still in touch with his roots and the core values that set him off on the journey in the first place? Will the 'outworkings of love' - however politically embarrassing and unfashionable such a phrase may be - colour and sustain the ministry of Britain's new Prime Minister? His father was a minister, and so is he, and though their ministries are divergent in contexts, the one religious the other political, perhaps in their shared roots and emotional impulses we may yet find a convergence of desire and human love?

As a shrewd politician, of course, he knows well not to advertise such concepts. What lies hidden in the heart of Gordon Brown lies hidden - perhaps - because it seems more tasteful not to broadcast your faiths or deepest dreams. In political terms he has made a career of avoiding vulnerability and retaining control - in order to bring about change without the retinue of religious affiliations or contraints of inflexible political dogma. Fastidious attention to detail and sustained mental control may seem to imply something 'flawed' in personality and lacking in passion and human emotion... but that may be a mistaken conclusion. Sometimes the privacy of deep convictions is more attractive than the cult of personality and the facile show of emotion consciously displayed to make a point.