Keir Starmer, one of four children, was brought up in the town of Oxted on the Kent-Surrey border.
He was raised by his toolmaker father and nurse mother, who suffered from a debilitating form of arthritis known as Still’s disease.
Sir Keir has spoken about the challenges of growing up at a time of high inflation in the 1970s.
“If you’re working class, you’re scared of debt,” he said during the election campaign.
“My mum and dad were scared of debt, so they would choose the bill that they wouldn’t pay.” The choice was the phone bill.
Sir Keir had a lot going on in his younger years.
He was obsessed with football (on the centre-left of midfield, of course). He was a talented musician and learnt violin with Norman Cook, who went on to become chart-topping DJ Fatboy Slim.
Sir Keir also had a rebellious streak. He and his friends were once caught by police illegally selling ice-cream on a French beach to raise cash.
But what about politics? There were always clues, including his name which was given to him as a tribute to the first leader of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie.
Sir Keir dabbled in left-wing politics over the course of his pre-parliamentary life.
That started at school, when he joined the Young Socialists, Labour’s youth movement.
After school, Sir Keir became the first person in his family to go to university, studying law at Leeds University and later at Oxford.
At Leeds, he was influenced by the indie music of the 1980s, from The Smiths and The Wedding Present to Orange Juice and Aztec Camera.
His biographer, Tom Baldwin, notes his favourite drink as a student was a mix of beer and cider - or Snakebite - and he had a taste for curry and chips.
For a while after graduating, Sir Keir lived above a brothel in north London.
That almost makes him sound cool, they should have mentioned this more. Especially the bit about his father's career.