SHE was the power behind the throne as Gordon Brown achieved his prime ministerial ambitions.
Since leaving Downing Street more than two years ago, Sarah Brown has devoted herself to charity campaigning, raising two young sons, John and Fraser, and writing a book about life at No 10.
Now Mrs Brown, who as Sarah Macaulay co-founded the successful public relations agency Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications when she was 30, has returned to the world of business, joining luxury department store Harrods as a non-executive director.
The famous emporium is no longer owned by the flamboyant Mohamed Al Fayed, but is in the hands of a Qatari-owned business.
Mrs Brown will advise Harrods on developing marketing plans, including corporate social responsibility programmes.
The store said the 50-year-old would draw on her extensive experience across a range of businesses and not-for-profit organisations.
According to documents filed at Companies House, Mrs Brown describes herself as a charity director and writer.
She said: "I look forward to my return to business in joining the Harrods Group board and welcome the opportunity to work on the marketing and corporate social responsibility plans for this world-renowned British brand."
Mrs Brown was born in Buckinghamshire to schoolteacher mother Pauline and Scots-born father Iain, who worked for the Longman publishing company, and spent some of her early childhood in Fife.
She also lived in Tanzania with her parents for a spell but settled with her mother in London at the age of seven following her parents' divorce. After graduating with a psychology degree from Bristol University, Mrs Brown worked at brand consultancy Wolff Olins specialising in Labour events, such as the Manufacturing Matters Conference and party donor events.
She then co-founded the PR firm Hobsbawm Macaulay with schoolfriend Julia Hobsbawm.
She first met her future husband at a Labour Party event her firm was organising, and they married in 2000 in a Church of Scotland ceremony at the then Chancellor's North Queensferry home.
She left work a year later when expecting daughter Jennifer Jane, who died at 10 days old after being born two months prematurely in hospital in Kirkcaldy.
In a series of essays for a charity book, she described how much the tragedy had changed her life.
Mrs Brown wrote: "I had assumed I must find a way to recover and resume my life, which proved impossible. Instead I realised that the loss of Jennifer had changed me forever, and importantly I realised that this was OK."
Qatar Holding acquired the Harrods group for £1.5 billion in 2010.
It is unclear how much Mrs Brown will be paid or how many days she will dedicate to her role.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article