Early life
Liz Truss was born Mary Elizabeth Truss in Oxford on 26 July 1975. Her parents were left-leaning academics, and her childhood included moves between Scotland, northern England and Canada. That upbringing gave her an early familiarity with argument, institutions and the language of public causes. It also made her later political identity more striking. Truss did not emerge from the traditional Conservative social world. Her route into public life was shaped by debate, education and a willingness to revise her allegiances. The contrast between her early environment and later free-market Conservatism became part of her political story: she presented herself as someone who had chosen ideas rather than inherited them. Whether admirers saw that as intellectual independence or critics saw it as ideological restlessness, it helped define her public persona.
