Samantha Cameron - Britain's 'first lady' will find herself the centre of attention

SAMANTHA Cameron is no stranger to the front pages but as Britain's new "first lady", she will discover a whole new level of fame.

Elegant and effortless, at five months pregnant Mrs Cameron, pictured, has received a good deal of attention from both broadsheets and glossy magazines.

The Camerons' new baby, due in September, will be only the third to have been born to a serving prime minister since 1849.

Tony and Cherie Blair's son Leo was the second, born in 2000 – three years after Mr Blair swept to power.

The new Cameron baby will join six-year-old Nancy and four-year-old Arthur Elwen.

Mrs Cameron has encouraged her husband to be open about life at their family home in Notting Hill and they have released smiling family portraits and video blogs to the electorate since he became party leader.

The Camerons were devastated last February when their six-year-old son Ivan died. He suffered from cerebral palsy and severe epilepsy, and his profound disability influenced Mr Cameron's politics.

Now in Downing Street, Mrs Cameron will continue to work as creative director of thriving high-end stationery firm, Smythson.

Born in London in 1971, Samantha Sheffield was brought up on her family's sprawling estate in Lincolnshire, near Scunthorpe. Her mother, Annabel Jones, divorced her father, Sir Reginald Sheffield, when Samantha was young – and subsequently married former Tory minister Lord Astor.

Samantha was a teenager when she was introduced to David Cameron by her friend Clare, his younger sister. The couple dated while she was an art student in Bristol and he was advising the then Chancellor Norman Lamont in London. They married in 1996.

After years of keeping a low profile, Mrs Cameron was rarely out of the newspapers during the election campaign.

Mr Cameron chose to deploy his "secret weapon" as polls predicting a hung parliament started to mount and Mrs Cameron gave her first public interview on ITV1.

With echoes of Sarah Brown's touching tributes to Gordon on the Labour Party conference stage, Mrs Cameron said David was "definitely not perfect" and has "lots of very irritating habits" such as being messy around the house.

But she added: "We've been together 18 years now and we've been through some fairly tough times, and I can honestly say that I don't think in all that time he's ever let me down."

Mrs Cameron swapped her glamorous workwear for jeans and trainers on campaign visits to charities – which signalled to fashion mags how seriously she was taking her duties.

She has received ample scrutiny from fashionistas over the years. At last year's Tory party conference, she chose a simple grey polka-dot dress from Marks and Spencer and heels from Zara, showing that despite her high-powered job and aristocratic background, she was an ordinary wife and mother.

It later emerged that the dress, costing 65 on the high street, had sold out months before and this version had been made especially for her. Undoubtedly,

Mrs Cameron will be able to compete easily with the array of glamorous wives on the world stage.