Iain Duncan Smith

His parents married in 1946.

One of his maternal great-grandmothers was Ellen Oshey, a Japanese woman living in Beijing who married Pamela's maternal grandfather, Irish merchant seaman Captain Samuel Lewis Shaw.

Through Ellen and Samuel, Duncan Smith is related to Canadian CBC wartime broadcaster Peter Stursberg (whose book No Foreign Bones in China records their story) and his son, former CBC vice-president Richard Stursberg.

Duncan Smith was educated at Bishop Glancey Secondary Modern School, until the age of 14, and then at HMS Conway (school ship), a merchant navy training school on the Isle of Anglesey, until he was 18.

There, he played rugby union in the position of fly-half alongside Clive Woodward at centre.

Sir George Iain Duncan Smith (born 9 April 1954), often referred to by his initials IDS, is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2001 to 2003.

Duncan Smith was born George Ian Duncan Smith on 9 April 1954 in Edinburgh.

A second "i" was added to his middle name "Ian" later in life, with several explanations given: Duncan Smith changed it himself to prove that he was committed to Scotland; the person who filled in his birth certificate made a mistake; Duncan Smith's mother registered him, but Duncan Smith's patriotic father later suggested to his son to change it to the Scottish spelling.

He is the son of Wilfrid George Gerald "W. G. G." Duncan Smith, a decorated Royal Air Force flying ace of the Second World War, and Pamela Summers, a ballerina.

In 1973, he spent a year studying at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy, but did not complete his studies and did not gain any qualifications.

After education at the HMS Conway (school ship) training school and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he served in the Scots Guards from 1975 to 1981, seeing tours in Northern Ireland and Rhodesia.

He then attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards as a second lieutenant on 28 June 1975, with the service number 500263.

He was promoted to lieutenant in the Scots Guards on 28 June 1977.

During his service, he served in Northern Ireland and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he was aide-de-camp to Major-General Sir John Acland, commander of the Commonwealth Monitoring Force monitoring the ceasefire during elections.

Duncan Smith worked for GEC Marconi in the 1980s and attended the company's staff college Dunchurch College of Management.

He did not gain any qualifications at Dunchurch and completed six separate courses lasting a few days each, adding up to roughly a month in total.

He joined the Conservative Party in 1981.

After unsuccessfully contesting Bradford West in 1987, he was elected to Parliament at the 1992 general election.

He was a backbencher during the premiership of John Major.

At the 1987 general election Duncan Smith contested the constituency of Bradford West, where the incumbent Labour Party MP Max Madden retained his seat.

He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Chingford and Woodford Green, formerly Chingford, since 1992.

The son of W. G. G. Duncan Smith, a Royal Air Force flying ace, Duncan Smith was born in Edinburgh and raised in Solihull.

At the 1992 general election, Duncan Smith stood in the London constituency of Chingford, a safe Conservative seat, following the retirement of Conservative MP Norman Tebbit.

He became a member of the House of Commons with a majority of 14,938.

A committed Eurosceptic, he became a constant thorn in the side of Prime Minister John Major's government of 1992 to 1997, opposing Major's pro-European agenda at the time.

This was something that would often be raised during his own subsequent leadership when he called for the party to unite behind him.

During the leadership of William Hague he served as Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security between 1997 and 1998, and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence from 1998 to 2001.

Duncan Smith remained on the backbenches until 1997, when the new Conservative leader William Hague brought him into the Shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Social Security, the former version of the Department for Work and Pensions which he would later lead.

At the 1997 general election, boundary changes saw his constituency renamed Chingford and Woodford Green and his majority of 14,938 was reduced to 5,714.

Duncan Smith realised the dangers that he and neighbouring Conservative MPs faced, so redoubled his efforts: "We spent the final week of the campaign working my seat as if it was [were] a marginal. I held on but everywhere around me went."

In 1999, Duncan Smith replaced John Maples as Shadow Secretary of State for Defence.

Following the resignation of William Hague, Duncan Smith won the 2001 Conservative Party leadership election, partly owing to the support of Margaret Thatcher for his Eurosceptic beliefs.

William Hague resigned after the Labour Party continued in government with another large parliamentary majority following the 2001 general election.

In September 2001, Duncan Smith was the successful candidate in the Conservative Party leadership election.

However, many Conservative MPs came to consider him incapable of winning the next general election and, in 2003, he lost a vote of confidence in his leadership; he immediately resigned and was succeeded by Michael Howard.

Returning to the backbenches, Duncan Smith founded the Centre for Social Justice, a centre-right think tank independent of the Conservative Party, and became chair of its Social Justice Policy Group.

He was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016.

In May 2010, new Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him to serve in the cabinet as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

During his tenure, he was responsible for seeing through changes to the welfare state.

He resigned from the cabinet in March 2016, in opposition to Chancellor George Osborne's proposed cuts to disability benefits, returning to the backbenches, where he remains.