title: Kim Jong-un

text: In January 2021, the WPK held its 8th congress, in which Kim Jong-un was elected General Secretary of the WPK. The congress also saw the WPK reassert its commitment to communism.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: According to the North Korean constitution, Kim Jong-un is part of a triumvirate heading the executive branch of the North Korean government along with Premier Kim Tok-hun and parliament president Choe Ryong-hae. Kim Jong-un commands the armed forces, Kim Tok-hun heads the government and handles domestic affairs, and Choe Ryong-hae handles foreign relations. However, under the constitution, Kim Jong-un is the highest-ranking of the three. Since 1998, the NDC chairmanship has been constitutionally defined as "the highest post in the state", and a constitutional amendment enacted by the regime explicitly named the NDC (first) chairman as "the supreme leader of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea". However, analysts are divided about how much actual power Kim has.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kim Jong-un frequently performs symbolic acts that associate him with the personality cult of his father and grandfather. Like them, Kim Jong-un regularly tours the country, giving "on-the-spot guidance" at various sites. North Korean state media often refers to him as "Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un" or "Marshal Kim Jong-un".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In July 2012, Kim Jong-un showed a change in cultural policy from his father by attending a Moranbong Band concert. The concert contained several elements of pop culture from the West, particularly the United States. Kim used this event to introduce his wife to the public, an unprecedented move in North Korea.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In 2012, Kim Jong-il's personal chef Kenji Fujimoto visited North Korea and said, "Stores in Pyongyang were brimming with products and people in the streets looked cheerful. North Korea has changed a lot since Kim Jong-un assumed power. All of this is because of leader Kim Jong-un."


title: Kim Jong-un

text: According to analysts, Kim Jong-un has used his resemblance to his grandfather to harness Kim Il-sung's personality cult and popular nostalgia for earlier times. In 2013, Kim copied his grandfather's style when he gave his first New Year's address, a break from the approach of his father, Kim Jong-il, who never made a televised address during his 17 years in power. He has also appeared more accessible and open than his father, hugging and linking arms with young and old. In his public appearances, he appears more active than his father or grandfather, for example, weeding, riding a horse, driving a tank, riding a rollercoaster, or using information technology.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In April 2012, when a satellite launch failed, the government admitted this publicly, the first time it had ever done so. In May 2014, following the collapse of an apartment building in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un was said to be very upset at the loss of life that resulted. A statement issued by the country's official news agency the Korean Central News Agency used the rare expression "profound consolation and apology". An unnamed government official was quoted by the BBC as saying Kim Jong-un had "sat up all night, feeling painful". While the height of the building and the number of casualties was not released, media reports described it as a 23-story building and indicated that more than a hundred people may have died in the collapse.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kim Jong-un has been promoting a policy of "byungjin", similar to his grandfather Kim il-sung's policies from the 1960s, developing the national economy in parallel with the nations nuclear weapons program. A set of comprehensive economic measures, the "", were introduced in 2013. The measures increase the autonomy of enterprises by granting them "certain rights to engage in business activities autonomously and elevate the will to labor through appropriately implementing the socialist distribution system". Another priority of economic policies that year was agriculture, where the "pojon" (vegetable garden) responsibility system was implemented. The system reportedly achieved a major increase in output in some collective farms.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: North Korean media were describing the economy as a "flexible collectivist system" where enterprises were applying "active and evolutionary actions" to achieve economic development. These reports reflect Kim's general economic policy of reforming management, increasing the autonomy and incentives for economic actors. This set of reforms known as the "May 30th measures" reaffirms both socialist ownership and "objective economic laws in guidance and management" to improve living standards. Other objectives of the measures are to increase the availability of domestically manufactured goods on markets, introduction of defence innovations into the civilian sector and boost international trade.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: There has been a construction boom in Pyongyang, bringing colour and creative architectural styles to the city. While in the past there was a concentration on building monuments, Kim Jong-un's government has constructed amusement parks, aquatic parks, skating rinks, a dolphinarium and a ski resort. Kim has been actively promoting a consumer culture, including entertainment and cosmetics.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: As with all reporting on North Korea, reports of purges and executions are difficult to verify. Allegations in 2013 that Kim Jong-un had his ex-girlfriend, singer Hyon Song-wol, executed for violating pornography laws turned out to be false. In May 2016, analysts were surprised to find that General Ri Yong-gil, reported by South Korea to have been executed earlier in the year, was, in fact, alive and well.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In December 2013, Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-thaek was arrested and executed for treachery. Jang is believed to have been executed by firing squad. Yonhap has stated that, according to multiple unnamed sources, Kim Jong-un has also put to death members of Jang's family, to completely destroy all traces of Jang's existence through "extensive executions" of his family, including the children and grandchildren of all close relatives. Those reportedly killed in Kim's purge include Jang's sister Jang Kye-sun, her husband and ambassador to Cuba, Jon Yong-jin, and Jang's nephew and ambassador to Malaysia, Jang Yong-chol. The nephew's two sons were also said to have been killed. At the time of Jang's removal, it was announced that "the discovery and purge of the Jang group ... made our party and revolutionary ranks purer ..." and after his execution on 12 December 2013 state media warned that the army "will never pardon all those who disobey the order of the Supreme Commander".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: O Sang-hon was a deputy security minister in the Ministry of People's Security in the government of North Korea who was reportedly killed in a political purge in 2014. According to the South Korean newspaper "The Chosun Ilbo", O was executed by flamethrower for his role in supporting Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-taek.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In January 2013, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that the North Korean human rights situation had not improved since Kim had taken power and called for an investigation. A report on the situation of human rights in North Korea in February 2013 by United Nations Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman proposed a UN commission of inquiry. The report of the commission of inquiry was published in February 2014 and suggested Kim could "possibly" be made accountable for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In July 2016, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed personal sanctions on Kim. Although his involvement in human rights abuses was cited as the reason, officials said the sanctions target the country's nuclear and missile programs.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In June 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump condemned Kim Jong-un's "brutal" regime and described Kim as a "madman" after the death of American student Otto Warmbier who had been imprisoned during a visit to North Korea. However, in 2019, President Trump said that he believed Kim was not responsible for Warmbier's death.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In 2012, a machine gun was discovered beneath a juniper tree in Ryugyeongwon, located near a route that Kim was going to travel. It was assumed this was part of an assassination attempt.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In May 2017, the North Korean government stated that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) hired a North Korean lumberjack who worked in Russia to assassinate Kim with a "biochemical weapon" that was both radioactive and nano-poisonous, and whose effect would have been delayed by a few months. North Korea said that it would seek extradition of anyone involved in the assassination attempt.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Under Kim Jong-un, North Korea has continued to develop nuclear weapons, testing bombs in February 2013, January and September 2016, and September 2017. As of 2018, North Korea had tested nearly 90 missiles, three times more than in the time of his father and grandfather. In 2012, on the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birth, he said, "the days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs". At a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party held on 31 March 2013, he announced that North Korea would adopt "a new strategic line on carrying out economic construction and building nuclear armed forces simultaneously".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: According to several analysts, North Korea sees the nuclear arsenal as vital to deter an attack, and it is unlikely that North Korea would launch a nuclear war. According to a RAND Corporation senior researcher, Kim Jong-un believes that nuclear weapons are his guarantee of regime survival.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: During the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea in 2016, Kim Jong-un stated that North Korea would "not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty". However, on other occasions, North Korea has threatened "pre-emptive" nuclear attacks against a US-led attack. In December 2015, Kim stated that his family "turned the DPRK into a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate a self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In January 2018, estimates of North Korea's nuclear arsenal ranged between 15 and 60 bombs, probably including hydrogen bombs. In the opinion of analysts, the Hwasong-15 missile is capable of striking anywhere in the United States.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: The United Nations enacted a series of sanctions against North Korea for its nuclear program and missile tests.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kim officially declared North Korea a nuclear weapons state during a speech on 9 September 2022, the country's foundation day.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In his 2018 New Year Speech, Kim announced that he was open to dialogue with South Korea with a view to take part in the upcoming Winter Olympics in the South. The Seoul–Pyongyang hotline was reopened after almost two years. North and South Korea marched together in the Olympics opening ceremony, and fielded a united women's ice hockey team. In addition to the athletes, Kim sent an unprecedented high-level delegation including his sister, Kim Yo-jong, and President of the Presidium, Kim Yong-nam, and performers such as the Samjiyon Orchestra. On 5 March, he had a meeting with South Korea's Chief of the National Security Office, Chung Eui-yong, in Pyongyang.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In March 2018, Kim visited Beijing, meeting with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, marking his first foreign trip since assuming power.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: At the April 2018 inter-Korean summit, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in signed the Panmunjom Declaration, pledging to convert the Korean Armistice Agreement into a full peace treaty, formally ending the Korean War, by the end of the year.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 26 May, Kim had a second and unannounced meeting in the North Korean side of Panmunjom, meeting with Moon to discuss his proposed summit with US President Donald Trump in Singapore.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 10 June, Kim arrived in Singapore and met with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. On 12 June, Kim held his first summit with Trump and signed a declaration, affirming a commitment to peace, nuclear disarmament, and the repatriation of the remains of U.S. war dead. This marked the first-ever meeting between leaders of North Korea and the United States.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In September, Kim held another summit with Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. Kim agreed to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons facilities if the United States took reciprocal action. The two governments also announced that they would establish buffer zones on their borders to prevent clashes.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In February 2019, Kim held another summit with Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, which Trump cut short on the second day without an agreement. The Trump administration said that the North Koreans wanted complete sanctions relief, while the North Koreans said that they were only asking for partial sanctions relief.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 25 April 2019, Kim held his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok, Russia. On 30 June 2019, in the Korean DMZ, Kim again met with Trump, shaking hands warmly and expressing hope for peace. Kim and Trump then joined Moon Jae-in for a brief chat. Talks in Stockholm began on 5 October 2019 between US and North Korean negotiating teams, but broke down after one day.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: During 2020, Kim claimed success in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic in North Korea, after putting the country in isolation and limiting public gatherings.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In April 2020, a three-week absence from public view led to speculation that Kim was seriously ill or dead, but no clear evidence of any health problem came to light. He continued to appear in public rarely over the following months, possibly because of health problems or the risk of COVID-19. In August, it was reported that Kim had ceded a degree of authority to his sister, Kim Yo-jong, giving her responsibility for relations with South Korea and the United States and making her his "de facto" second-in-command.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 5 September 2020, Kim toured the areas hit by Typhoon Maysak. He also replaced the local provincial party committee chairman and ordered Pyongyang officials to lead a recovery effort. His ruling party also pledged harsh punishment for the city and provincial officials, stating that they failed to protect the residents from the disaster. Kim fired Kim Song-il, who was chairman of the South Hamgyong Province Workers' Party of Korea Committee.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: At the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, held in early January 2021, Kim delivered a nine-hour-long report in which he admitted failures in carrying out the economic plan and lambasted leading officials' shortcomings. He also praised the country's nuclear capability and addressed the United States as the DPRK's main enemy. The congress restored the operative functions of the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, a title previously awarded "eternally" to Kim Jong-il in 2012, and elected Kim Jong-un to it. In February 2021, state-run media began referring to Kim as "president" in English language articles. In November 2021, the South Korean National Intelligence Service reported that the North Korean government has begun using the term "Kim Jong-un-ism", in an effort to establish an independent ideological system centered on Kim. Analyst Ken Gause described this as Kim "now ready to put his stamp firmly on the regime".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In January 2022, a North Korean KCTV documentary, "2021, A Great Victorious Year", was released, which appeared to address Kim's sudden weight loss and infrequent public appearances. It said that Kim's body had "completely withered away" as he "suffered" for the people during 2021, completing tasks hitherto unpublicized while North Korea faced "challenges" and "worst-ever hardships".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In May 2022, North Korea announced that its first COVID-19 outbreak had started in April. In a meeting with the WPK, Kim ordered "all the cities and counties of the whole country to thoroughly lock down," and called for the mobilization of emergency reserve medical supplies. In the days that followed the country's announcement, hundreds of thousands of new cases of fevers were reported, as well as 27 related deaths related to fever of unidentified origins, among which one death was confirmed as from the Omicron variant according to state media outlet KCNA. Kim spoke further at a subsequent WPK meeting, stating that the virus had brought “great turmoil” to his country, and urged the party and people to remain unified and organized in their efforts to combat the virus. Kim went on to blame the crisis on incompetence and irresponsibility on the part of the party organizations, and also cast blame on “negligence including drug overdose due to lack of knowledge of treatment methods” as the reason for most of the deaths since the outbreak. As part of the country’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Kim stated that he looked to learn from the response mounted by China. By the end of May, North Korean state media reported the COVID-19 outbreak was “controlled and improved across the country” following a re-evaluation by Kim and the WPK.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef who was Kim Jong-il's personal cook, described Kim Jong-un as "a chip off the old block, a spitting image of his father in terms of face, body shape, and personality". Kim is a fan of basketball, and his favorite teams include the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 26 February 2013, Kim Jong‑un met Dennis Rodman, which led many reporters to speculate that Rodman was the first American that Kim had met. During Rodman's trip, "Vice" magazine correspondent Ryan Duffy said that Kim was "socially awkward" and avoided eye contact.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: According to Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute, Kim Jong-un has greater visible interest in the welfare of his people and engages in greater interaction with them than his father did.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: South Koreans who saw Kim at the summit in April 2018 described him as straightforward, humorous, and attentive. After meeting him, Donald Trump said, "I learned he was a talented man. I also learned he loves his country very much." He added that Kim had a "great personality" and was "very smart".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: "Forbes" magazine ranked Kim as the 36th most powerful person in the world in 2018, the highest amongst Koreans.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In a 2013 poll, 61.7% of North Korean defectors in South Korea said that Kim Jong Un was probably supported by most of his countrymen, an increase from the 55.7% approval rating for his father in a similar survey done two years earlier.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In a poll of South Koreans conducted following the May 2018 inter-Korean summit, 78% of respondents said they trusted Kim, compared with 10% approval a couple months prior.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: The nickname "Kim Fatty the Third" () began trending among Chinese users of the websites Baidu and Sina Weibo in late 2016. In response, the North Korean government successfully petitioned the Chinese government to censor the nickname on all Chinese websites.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: "International Business Times" reported Kim to have 17 luxury palaces around North Korea, a fleet of 100 (mostly European) luxury cars, a private jet, and a yacht. Rodman described his trip to a private island owned by Kim Jong-un: "It's like Hawaii, Ibiza, or Aruba but he's the only one that lives there."


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In 2012, "Business Insider" reported that there were "igns of a rise in luxury goods ... creeping out of North Korea since Kim Jong-un took over" and that his "wife Ri Sol-ju (리설주) was photographed holding what appeared to be an expensive Dior handbag, worth almost $1,594an average year's salary in North Korea". According to diplomatic sources, "Kim Jong-un likes to drink and party all night like his father and ordered the [imported sauna] equipment to help him beat hangovers and fatigue."


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In 2018, Kim received delivery of two armored Mercedes-Maybach S600s, each valued at $500,000, through an illicit shipping network in violation of international sanctions.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In 2009, reports suggested that Kim Jong-un was a diabetic and suffered from hypertension. He is also known to smoke cigarettes.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kim Jong-un did not appear in public for six weeks in September and October 2014. State media reported that he was suffering from an "uncomfortable physical condition". Previously he had been limping. When he reappeared, he was using a walking stick.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In September 2015, the South Korean government commented that Kim appeared to have gained in body fat over the previous five years, reaching a total estimated body weight of .


title: Kim Jong-un

text: In April 2020, Kim was not seen in public for 20 days, leading to rumours that he was critically ill or dead. In June 2021, following a one-month-long absence from the public eye, outside observers noted that Kim had lost considerable amount of weight. It is speculated that he had lost .


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 25 July 2012, North Korean state media reported for the first time that Kim Jong-un was married to Ri Sol-ju. Ri, who was believed to be in her early 20s, had been accompanying Kim Jong-un to public appearances for several weeks prior to the announcement. According to a South Korean analyst, Kim Jong-il had hastily arranged the marriage after suffering a stroke in 2008, the two married in 2009, and they had a son in 2010. Dennis Rodman, after visiting in 2013, reported that they had a second newborn child, a daughter named Ju-ae. According to South Korean intelligence sources, the couple is believed to have had a third child, a daughter, in February 2017.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 18 November 2022, Kim Jong-un was seen reviewing key military arsenals with his daughter Ju-ae. The two were seen together again at a gathering with missile scientists later in the same month.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Kim is sometimes accompanied by his younger sister Kim Yo-jong, who is said to be instrumental in creating his public image and organising public events for him. According to Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, and others, the promotion of Yo-jong and others is a sign that "the Kim Jong-un regime has ended its co-existence with the remnants of the previous Kim Jong-il regime by carrying out a generational replacement in the party's key elite posts".


title: Kim Jong-un

text: On 13 February 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the exiled half-brother of Kim Jong-un, was assassinated with the nerve agent VX while walking through Terminal 2 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Kim Jong-un is widely believed to have ordered the assassination.


title: Kim Jong-un

text: Jubilee Medal "75 Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (Russia, 2020) — awarded for his efforts at preserving the memory of Soviet soldiers who died during the Soviet–Japanese War (1945) and were buried in North Korea


title: Liz Truss

text: Mary Elizabeth Truss (born 26 July 1975) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down amid a government crisis, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. Truss previously held various Cabinet positions under prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson, lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022. She has been Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk since 2010.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss attended Merton College, Oxford, and was the president of Oxford University Liberal Democrats. In 1996, she joined the Conservative Party. She worked at Shell and Cable & Wireless, and was the deputy director of the think tank Reform. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she was elected as the MP for South West Norfolk at the 2010 UK general election. As a backbencher, she called for reform in several policy areas including childcare, mathematics education and the economy. Truss founded the Free Enterprise Group of Thatcherite Conservative MPs and wrote or co-wrote a number of papers and books, including "After the Coalition" (2011) and "Britannia Unchained" (2012).


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Childcare and Education from 2012 to 2014, before Cameron appointed her Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in his 2014 cabinet reshuffle. Although she supported the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign for the UK to remain in the European Union, Truss supported Brexit after the outcome of the 2016 referendum. Following Cameron's resignation in 2016, his successor May appointed Truss as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor, making Truss the first woman to serve as Lord Chancellor in the office's thousand-year history. After the 2017 general election, Truss was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. After May resigned in 2019, Truss supported Johnson's successful bid to become Conservative leader and prime minister, after which he appointed Truss as Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade in July 2019; she subsequently took on the additional role of Minister for Women and Equalities in September 2019. Johnson promoted Truss to Foreign Secretary in the 2021 cabinet reshuffle. During her time in the position, Truss co-chaired the EU–UK Partnership Council, led negotiations on the Northern Ireland Protocol, and was involved in the UK's response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss defeated Rishi Sunak in the Conservative Party leadership election to succeed Johnson, who resigned amid a prior government crisis. Truss was appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II two days before the monarch's death. To tackle the ongoing cost of living crisis and energy supply crisis, Truss's government announced the Energy Price Guarantee to limit energy prices for households, businesses and public-sector organisations. Her government then announced large-scale borrowing and tax cuts in a mini-budget, which was widely criticised and largely reversed, having led to financial instability. Facing mounting criticism and loss of confidence in her leadership, Truss announced her resignation as leader of the Conservative Party; Sunak was elected unopposed as her successor, and replaced her as prime minister. Truss remains in the House of Commons as a backbencher.


title: Liz Truss

text: Mary Elizabeth Truss was born on 26 July 1975 in Oxford, England, to John Truss and Priscilla Truss (). She is a descendant of Charles Truss, after whom Truss's Island on the River Thames is named. Truss has three younger brothers, Chris, Patrick and Francis. From an early age, she has been known by her middle name. Her father is an emeritus professor of pure mathematics at the University of Leeds, while her mother was a nurse and teacher. Truss has described her parents as being "to the left of Labour"; her mother was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. When Truss later stood for election to Parliament as a Conservative, her mother agreed to campaign for her, while her father declined to do so. Truss's parents divorced in 2003; at the 2004 Leeds City Council election, her mother unsuccessfully stood for election as a Liberal Democrat.


title: Liz Truss

text: The family moved to Paisley, Renfrewshire, in Scotland when she was four years old, living there from 1979 to 1985, with Truss attending West Primary School. She then attended Roundhay School, a comprehensive school in the Roundhay area of Leeds, which she later said had "let down" children, a claim disputed by others. Aged 12, she spent a year in Burnaby, British Columbia, where she attended Parkcrest Elementary School while her father taught at Simon Fraser University. Truss has praised the coherent curriculum and the Canadian attitude that it was "really good to be top of the class", which she contrasts to her education at Roundhay School. Truss was remembered by adolescent classmates as a studious girl with "geeky" friends. She reportedly had an interest in social issues such as homelessness. She read philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at Merton College, Oxford, graduating in 1996.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss was active in the Liberal Democrats. She was president of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and a member of the national executive committee of Liberal Democrat Youth and Students (LDYS). During her time as a Liberal Democrat, Truss supported the legalisation of cannabis and the abolition of the monarchy, and campaigned against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.


title: Liz Truss

text: From 1996 to 2000, Truss worked for Shell, during which time she qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant (ACMA) in 1999. In 2000, Truss was employed by Cable & Wireless and rose to economic director before leaving in 2005.


title: Liz Truss

text: After losing her first two elections, Truss became the full-time deputy director of Reform in January 2008, where she advocated more rigorous academic standards in schools, a greater focus on tackling serious and organised crime, and urgent action to deal with Britain's falling competitiveness. She co-authored "The Value of Mathematics", "Fit for Purpose", "A New Level", and "Back To Black: Budget 2009 Paper", among other reports.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss served as the chair of the Lewisham Deptford Conservative Association from 1998 to 2000. Truss unsuccessfully contested the Greenwich London Borough Council elections in 1998 (for Vanbrugh ward) and 2002 (in Blackheath Westcombe). On 4 May 2006, she was elected as a councillor for Eltham South in the 2006 Greenwich London Borough Council election. Truss did not seek re-election to the council on 6 May 2010, with the 2010 UK general election being announced on 6 April 2010, the Dissolution of Parliament on 12 April 2010 and the last day to file MP nomination papers 20 April 2010.


title: Liz Truss

text: At the 2001 UK general election, Truss stood for the constituency of Hemsworth in West Yorkshire, a safe seat for the Labour Party. She came a distant second, but increased the Conservative vote by 3.2%. Before the 2005 UK general election, the parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley, Sue Catling, was pressured to resign by the local Conservative Association, whereupon Truss was selected to fight the seat, which is also in West Yorkshire. Truss narrowly lost the election to the Labour Party incumbent.


title: Liz Truss

text: Under David Cameron as Conservative leader, Truss was added to the party's "A List". In October 2009, she was selected for the South West Norfolk seat by members of the constituency Conservative Association. She won over 50% of the vote in the first round of the final against five other candidates. Shortly after her selection, some members of the constituency association objected to Truss's selection, due to her failing to declare a prior affair with the married Conservative MP Mark Field. A motion was proposed to terminate Truss's candidature, but this was defeated by 132 votes to 37 at a general meeting of the association's members three weeks later.


title: Liz Truss

text: Following her election to the House of Commons on 6 May 2010, Truss campaigned for issues including the retention of the RAF Tornado base at RAF Marham in her constituency; over seven months she asked 13 questions in the Commons about RAF Marham, secured a special debate on the subject, wrote dozens of letters to ministers and collected signatures on a petition which was delivered to Downing Street. From the start of her parliamentary career, she also lobbied for the dualling of the A11 west of Thetford; the work was completed in 2014. "With an eye on Thetford Forest, in her constituency, she spoke out against the proposal to sell off forests" and played "a leading role" in preventing a waste incinerator being built at King's Lynn.


title: Liz Truss

text: In March 2011, Truss wrote a paper for the liberal think tank CentreForum in which she argued for an end to bias against serious academic subjects in the education system so that social mobility can be improved. Truss wrote a further paper for the same think tank in May 2012, in which she argued for change in the structure of the childcare market in Britain.


title: Liz Truss

text: In October 2011, Truss founded the Free Enterprise Group, which has been supported by over 40 other Conservative MPs. In September 2011, together with four other members of the Free Enterprise Group, she had co-authored "After the Coalition", a book which sought to challenge the consensus that Britain's economic decline is inevitable by arguing for the return of a more entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture.


title: Liz Truss

text: "Britannia Unchained" was published on 13 September 2012 by the same authors as above. In Chapter 4, which is named "Work Ethic" (page 61), the book states: "Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor." During a BBC leadership debate in July 2022, Truss said that the authors had each written a different chapter of the book and that Dominic Raab had written chapter 4 which contains those claims. Raab later remarked that the authors had taken "collective responsibility" for the book. As part of a serialisation in "The Daily Telegraph", Truss wrote an article previewing "Britannia Unchained". The book was promoted by its publishers as the work of "the Conservative Party's rising stars".


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss has championed Britain following Germany's lead in allowing people to have tax-free and less heavily regulated "mini-jobs". Since Truss published a paper on the policy for the Free Enterprise Group in February 2012, the policy has been examined by the Treasury as a policy to promote growth.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss has campaigned for improved teaching of more rigorous school subjects, especially mathematics. She noted in 2012 that only 20% of British students studied maths to 18, and called for maths classes to be compulsory for all those in full-time education. Truss herself studied maths and further maths at A level. She argued in 2011 that comprehensive school pupils were being "mis-sold" easy, low-value subjects to boost school results: comprehensive school pupils were six times as likely to take media studies at A-level as privately educated pupils. Truss also criticised the over-reliance on calculators to the detriment of mental arithmetic.


title: Liz Truss

text: From March 2011, Truss was a Member of the Justice Select Committee, remaining on the committee until her appointment as a government minister.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 4 September 2012, Truss was appointed as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Education, responsible for childcare and early learning, assessment, qualifications, curriculum reform, behaviour and attendance, and school food review. In this role, she developed some of the policy areas that she had pursued as a backbencher.


title: Liz Truss

text: In January 2013, she announced proposals to reform A-Levels, by concentrating examinations at the end of two-year courses. She sought to improve British standards in maths for fear that children are falling behind those in Asian countries, and led a fact-finding visit to schools and teacher-training centres in Shanghai in February 2014 to see how children there have become the best in the world at maths.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss also outlined plans to reform childcare in England, which would overhaul childcare qualifications and increase the maximum number of children relative to adults in a care establishment, with the intention of widening the availability of childcare along with increasing pay and qualifications among staff. The proposed reforms were broadly welcomed by some organisations such as the charity 4Children, the Confederation of British Industry and the College of West Anglia. However, the proposals met opposition from others. The TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady and the then Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg were among those criticising the reforms, and were echoed by some parents and childcare bodies, such as the charity National Day Nurseries Association.


title: Liz Truss

text: The columnist Polly Toynbee was highly critical of the minister's plans and challenged Truss to demonstrate how to care for two babies alongside four toddlers on her own. Truss responded to Toynbee's challenge by saying that being an early educator was a very demanding job, requiring great and specialist expertise, for which she was not trained. In the event, aspects of the reforms relating to relaxation of childcare ratios were blocked by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who said: "The response, not just from nurseries, but overwhelmingly from parent groups was they thought this was a bad idea."


title: Liz Truss

text: In a 15 July 2014 cabinet reshuffle, Truss was appointed Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural affairs, replacing Owen Paterson. In apparent contrast to her predecessor, Truss declared that she fully believed that climate change is happening, and that "human beings have contributed to that". She became a member of the Privy Council the next day.


title: Liz Truss

text: At the Conservative Party conference in September 2014, Truss made a speech in which she said "We import two-thirds of our cheese, that is a disgrace" and "In December, I’ll be in Beijing, opening up new pork markets." The awkwardness of her delivery led her to be widely mocked, and clips of the speech went viral.


title: Liz Truss

text: In November 2014, Truss launched a new 10-year bee and pollinator strategy to try to reverse the trend of falling bee populations, including a strategy to revive traditional meadows which provide the most fertile habitat for pollinators. In July 2015, she approved the limited temporary lifting of an EU ban on the use of two neonicotinoid pesticides, enabling their use for 120 days on about 5% of England's oilseed rape crop to ward off the cabbage-stem flea beetle; campaigners in 2012 warned that pesticides were shown to harm bees by damaging their renowned ability to navigate home.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss cut taxpayer subsidies for solar panels on agricultural land, as her view was that the land could be better used to grow crops, food and vegetables. She described farming and food as "hotbeds of innovation" and promoted the production and export of British food.


title: Liz Truss

text: In March 2015, she was one of two cabinet ministers to vote against the government's successful proposal to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, in what was technically a free vote.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 14 July 2016, Truss was appointed as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor in Theresa May's first ministry. Truss became the first woman to hold either position and the first female Lord Chancellor in the thousand-year history of the office. May's decision to appoint her was criticised by the then Minister of State for Justice Lord Faulks, who resigned from the government, questioning whether Truss would have the clout to be able to stand up to the prime minister when necessary, on behalf of the judges. Truss herself said that he did not contact her before going public with his criticism, and she had never met or spoken to him.


title: Liz Truss

text: In November 2016, Truss was further criticised, including by the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve and the Criminal Bar Association, for failing to support more robustly the judiciary and the principle of judicial independence, after three judges of the Divisional Court came under attack from politicians and from the "Daily Mail" for ruling against the government in "R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union". Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, who had previously suggested that, like her immediate predecessors Chris Grayling and Michael Gove, Truss lacked the essential legal expertise that the constitution requires, called for her to be sacked as Justice Secretary as her perceived inadequate response "signals to the judges that they have lost their constitutional protector".


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss denied she had failed to defend the judges. "An independent judiciary is the cornerstone of the rule of law, vital to our constitution and freedoms", she wrote. "It is my duty as Lord Chancellor to defend that independence. I swore to do so under my oath of office. I take that very seriously, and I will always do so." She also said that the independent judiciary was robust enough to withstand attack by "The Daily Telegraph" and "Daily Mail". However, in March 2017, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, told the House of Lords constitution select committee that Truss was "completely and utterly wrong" to say she could not criticise the media and reiterated the importance of protecting judges.


title: Liz Truss

text: Following a significant rise in prison violence incidents in 2015 and 2016, in November 2016 Truss announced a £1.3 billion investment programme in the prison service and the recruitment of 2,500 additional prison officers, partly reversing the cuts made under the previous coalition government.


title: Liz Truss

text: Following the 2017 UK general election, Truss was moved on 11 June to the position of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, attending the cabinet but not a full member of it, in what was seen by some as a demotion.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss developed an enthusiasm for cultivating her presence on Twitter and Instagram. "The Times" described this as an unorthodox approach that had won her fans. She was also closely involved in the launch of the free market campaign group, Freer. Some of her civil servants were reported as finding her tenure as chief secretary "exhausting", because of her demanding work schedule and her habit of asking officials multiplication questions at random intervals.


title: Liz Truss

text: In June 2018, Truss gave a speech outlining her declared commitment to freedom and individual liberty. She criticised regulations that get in the way of people's lives and warned that raising taxes could see the Conservatives being "crushed" at the polls; in particular, she criticised ministerial colleagues who she said should realise "that it's not macho just to demand more money. It's much tougher to demand better value and challenge the blob of vested interests within your department".


title: Liz Truss

text: In 2019, Truss declared that she could be a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party to succeed May. However, she ultimately elected not to stand, and instead endorsed Boris Johnson.


title: Liz Truss

text: After Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, Truss was tipped for promotion in return for her support during his leadership campaign, during which she advised Johnson on economic policy, and was the architect of plans to cut taxes for people earning over £50,000. Consequently, it was thought she would be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer or Business Secretary, but she was instead promoted to the position of Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. Following the resignation of Amber Rudd, Truss was additionally appointed Minister for Women and Equalities.


title: Liz Truss

text: Twice in September 2019, Truss said that the Department for International Trade had "inadvertently" allowed shipping of radio spares and an air cooler to Saudi Arabia in contravention of an order of the Court of Appeal, which found that UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in the war in Yemen were unlawful. While Truss apologised to a Commons committee on arms export controls, opposition MPs said her apology was insufficient and called for her to resign for breaking the law.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 19 March 2020, Truss introduced to Parliament the Trade Act 2021, which established the legal framework for the UK to conduct trade deals with nations around the world.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 7 July 2020, Truss announced the lifting of a year-long ban on the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. She said that "there is not a clear risk that the export of arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law."


title: Liz Truss

text: In August 2020, a number of meetings Truss held with the Institute of Economic Affairs were removed from the public record because they were recategorised as "personal discussions", which the Labour Party said raised concerns about integrity, transparency and honesty in public office.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss undertook negotiations for a post-Brexit free trade agreement between the UK and Japan. An agreement between the two countries was struck in September 2020, which Truss said would result in "99% of exports to Japan" being "tariff-free". It was the first major trade deal the UK had signed since leaving the European Union and was hailed as a "historic moment" by Truss; it mostly copied the existing trade deal the EU had agreed with Japan. This was followed by newly negotiated trade deals with Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.


title: Liz Truss

text: In December 2020, Truss made a speech on equality policy in which she stated that the UK focused too heavily on "fashionable" race, sexuality, and gender issues at the expense of poverty and geographical disparity. In the speech, she announced that the government and civil service would no longer be receiving unconscious bias training.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 15 September 2021 during a cabinet reshuffle, Johnson promoted Truss from International Trade Secretary to Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development affairs.


title: Liz Truss

text: At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, she said that France had acted unacceptably during the Jersey fishing dispute.


title: Liz Truss

text: In October 2021, she called on Russia to intervene in the Belarus–European Union border crisis and said she wanted a "closer trading and investment relationship" with the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia and Qatar. In November 2021, Truss and her Israeli counterpart Yair Lapid announced a new decade-long deal aimed at stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In December 2021, she met her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Stockholm, urging Russia to seek peace in Ukraine in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 5 November 2021, she called for a ceasefire in the Tigray War between Ethiopian rebel groups and the Ethiopian government led by Abiy Ahmed, saying that "there is no military solution and that negotiations are needed to avoid bloodshed and deliver lasting peace".


title: Liz Truss

text: In January 2022, the former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, who serves on the international board of the China Development Bank, accused Truss of making "demented" comments about Chinese military aggression in the Pacific, saying that "Britain suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation".Truss was appointed in December 2021 as the British Government's chief negotiator with the EU, following the resignation of Lord Frost. On 30 January 2022, she told the BBC's "Sunday Morning" programme that "we are supplying and offering extra support into our Baltic allies across the Black Sea, as well as supplying the Ukrainians with defensive weapons". The Russian diplomat Maria Zakharova commented, using social media, that the Baltic states are located on or near the Baltic Sea and not the Black Sea, which is 700 miles away from the Baltic. Truss's scheduled trip to Ukraine was cancelled after she tested positive for COVID-19 on 31 January 2022.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 6 February 2022, Truss warned that "China must respect the Falklands' sovereignty" and defended the Falkland Islands as "part of the British family" after China backed Argentina's claim over islands.


title: Liz Truss

text: In October 2022, it was revealed that Truss's phone was hacked during her service as the foreign minister with Russian spies under suspicion for the act.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 10 February 2022, Truss again met Lavrov. In the context of tensions between Russia and the West over a build-up of Russian troops near the Russia–Ukraine border, talks between the two foreign ministers were described as "difficult". Lavrov described the discussion as "turning out like the conversation of a mute and a deaf person". He dismissed "demands to remove Russian troops from Russian territory" as "regrettable" and asked Truss if she recognised Russia's sovereignty over the Voronezh and Rostov regions, two Russian provinces where Russian troops were deployed. Later that day, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office prepared legislation to allow for more sanctions on Russian organisations and individuals. On 21 February 2022, Truss condemned Russia's diplomatic recognition of two self-proclaimed separatist republics in the Donbas in Ukraine. She also stated that the British government would announce new sanctions against Russia.Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Truss was asked in a BBC interview on 27 February about a call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for foreigners to join the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, and if she supported British volunteers joining, to which she responded: "Absolutely, if that is what they want to do". The comments were criticised by some Conservative colleagues, including former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who said that while "the comments of the foreign secretary may be entirely honourable and understandable", people going to Ukraine to fight without formal licences from the UK government would be in breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 and committing a criminal offence. Following the Russian military's being placed on high nuclear alert on 27 February, Russian officials said it was in response to Truss's comments. Boris Johnson's spokesperson later stated that British citizens should not travel to Ukraine to fight the Russians and dismissed a claim by the Kremlin that comments from Truss prompted the nuclear alert.


title: Liz Truss

text: At the end of February, Truss called on the G7 countries to limit the import of oil and natural gas from Russia. She said the Russo-Ukrainian War could "last for years" and that it could mark the "beginning of the end" for Putin. In March, Truss said it was necessary to "work with all of our allies around the world", including Saudi Arabia, so that the UK is no longer "dependent" on Russia for oil and natural gas. She wanted to push Russia's economy "back into the Soviet era". On 27 April 2022, Truss said that Western allies, including the UK, must "double down" and "keep going further and faster" to "push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine", including Crimea. In July 2022, she blamed Putin for the emerging global energy and food crises.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 10 July 2022, Truss announced her intention to run in the Conservative Party leadership election to replace Boris Johnson. She pledged to cut taxes on day one if elected, and said she would "fight the election as a Conservative and govern as a Conservative", adding that she would also take "immediate action to help people deal with the cost of living". She said she would cancel a planned rise in corporation tax and reverse the recent increase in National Insurance rates, funded by delaying the date by which the national debt is planned to fall, as part of a "long-term plan to bring down the size of the state and the tax burden".


title: Liz Truss

text: On 20 July, Truss and former chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak were chosen by Conservative Party MPs to be put forward to the membership for the final leadership vote. She finished second in the final MPs ballot, receiving 113 votes to Sunak's 137 votes. In the membership vote, it was announced on 5 September that 57.4% of ballots were for Truss, making her the new leader.


title: Liz Truss

text: As the elected leader of the Conservatives, the majority party in Parliament, Truss was appointed the new Prime Minister by Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral Castle on 6 September 2022.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss began appointing her cabinet and to other government positions on 6 September 2022. With the appointment of Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Cleverly as Foreign Secretary, and Suella Braverman as Home Secretary, for the first time in British political history, no white men held positions in the Great Offices of State.


title: Liz Truss

text: Other key appointments included Thérèse Coffey as Deputy Prime Minister and Health Secretary, Brandon Lewis as Justice Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Chris Heaton-Harris as Northern Ireland Secretary, Jake Berry as Minister without Portfolio and Party chairman, Jacob Rees-Mogg as Business Secretary, Simon Clarke as Housing Secretary, Kemi Badenoch as Secretary of State for International Trade, Chloe Smith as Work and Pensions Secretary, Kit Malthouse as Education Secretary, Ranil Jayawardena as Environment Secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan as Transport Secretary, and Michael Ellis as Attorney General for England and Wales.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss retained Ben Wallace as Defence Secretary, Alok Sharma as President for COP26, Alister Jack as Scotland Secretary, Robert Buckland as Wales Secretary, and James Heappey as Minister of State for the Armed Forces and Veterans.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss was the fifteenth and final British Prime Minister to serve under Elizabeth II, with the Queen dying two days after appointing Truss as Prime Minister. Queen Elizabeth II's death at the age of 96 was announced by Buckingham Palace on 8 September 2022 at 18:30. Truss delivered a statement outside 10 Downing Street paying tribute to the Queen, stating that "Queen Elizabeth II was the rock on which modern Britain was built." A 1994 clip emerged around this time of Truss branding the monarchy "disgraceful" and advocating for republicanism when she was the president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 9 September, the House of Commons began two days of special tributes to the Queen and started the suspension of Parliament until 21 September during the national mourning period. On 10 September, Truss attended the Accession Ceremony of King Charles III and took an oath of allegiance to the King with fellow senior MPs. On 12 September, Charles III addressed Parliament for the first time as monarch. Truss attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey on 19 September 2022, where she read a lesson during the service.


title: Liz Truss

text: Shortly after her appointment, and in response to the cost of living crisis, Truss announced a two-year cap on the price per unit for domestic energy supplies called the Energy Price Guarantee, which the government said would cap average household energy bills at £2,500 per year, while costing the state between £70 and £140 billion.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 23 September 2022, Kwarteng announced a controversial mini-budget encapsulating Trussonomics, which proposed cutting taxation significantly, abolishing the 45% top income tax rate, cutting the basic rate of income tax, cancelling rises in national insurance contributions and corporation tax, abolishing the proposed Health and Social Care Levy, and cutting stamp duty, policies that were to be funded by borrowing. The budget was poorly received by financial markets, blamed for a rapid fall in the value of the pound, and prompted a response from the Bank of England. The budget was criticised by the International Monetary Fund, US President Joe Biden, the opposition Labour Party and many within Truss's party, including senior politicians Michael Gove and Grant Shapps. It was highly unpopular with the public, and contributed to a large fall in popularity of the Conservative party and for Truss personally.


title: Liz Truss

text: After initially defending the mini-budget, Truss instructed Kwarteng to reverse the abolition of the 45% income tax additional rate on 3 October. She later reversed the cut in corporation tax and sacked Kwarteng, replacing him with Jeremy Hunt on 14 October. Hunt reversed the remaining policies announced in the mini-budget, with the exception of the cuts to national insurance contributions and the raising of the stamp duty threshold. Hunt also reduced the Energy Price Guarantee from two years to six months.


title: Liz Truss

text: During her first three weeks as prime minister, Truss had "a speaking role before hundreds of world leaders" at the Queen's funeral, and held "a round of diplomatic meetings on the sideline" at the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September, as well as giving a speech in which she said that she wanted people to keep more of their earnings.


title: Liz Truss

text: On 20 October 2022 and her 45th day in office, Truss announced her resignation as leader of the Conservative Party and her intention to resign as prime minister saying that "given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative Party." In the same announcement, Truss said that after speaking with the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, they both agreed that there would be a leadership election "to be completed within the next week". Her resignation as prime minister was accepted by Charles III at an audience at Buckingham Palace. She was succeeded by Rishi Sunak as leader of the Conservative Party on 24 October, and advised Charles III to summon Sunak for an audience and for appointment as the new prime minister on 25 October. She became the shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom in history.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss said that she would remain in the House of Commons as a backbencher. The short length of her premiership was the subject of much ridicule, including a livestream of a head of lettuce comparing the shelf-life of the vegetable to her remaining tenure.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss is known for her economically liberal views and her support for free trade. She supports the neoliberal philosophy of supply-side economics, often referred to derogatorily as "trickle-down economics". She founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs, a pro-free market collection of parliamentarians arguing for a more entrepreneurial economy and fewer employment laws. After the September 2022 mini-budget, Truss fired her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, after 38 days in office. She replaced him with Jeremy Hunt, leading Faisal Islam of BBC News to write that "Trussonomics" is effectively dead.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss was described as a hawkish foreign secretary. She has called for Britain to reduce economic dependency on China and Russia and has supported certain diplomatic and economic sanctions imposed by the British government against China, including barring the Chinese ambassador to the UK Zheng Zeguang from entering Parliament, in response to China's retaliatory sanctions due to Xinjiang. She accused Rishi Sunak of "seeking closer economic relations" with China. Truss has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the context of deteriorating cross strait relations, but, citing precedent, has said she would not visit the island nation if she was elected prime minister. She described the Chinese government's treatment of the Uyghur people as "genocide".


title: Liz Truss

text: She stated that the UK and Turkey are "key European NATO allies" and called for UK–Turkey cooperation on "energy, defence and security" to be deepened. Truss said she would continue to support Cyprus in its "efforts for reunification under international law and in helping find a peaceful and lasting solution" to the Cyprus conflict between Greek Cypriots and Turkish-backed Turkish Cypriot separatists.


title: Liz Truss

text: In 2022 she called Saudi Arabia an "ally", but said she was not "condoning" the country's policies. Truss promised to "review" moving the British embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.


title: Liz Truss

text: Since the referendum, Truss has supported Brexit; in 2017, she said that if another referendum were held, she would vote for Brexit, saying: "I believed there would be massive economic problems but those haven't come to pass and I've also seen the opportunities." In the July 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, Truss said of her support for Remain that "I was wrong and I am prepared to admit I was wrong". She added that "some of the portents of doom didn't happen and instead we have actually unleashed new opportunities" after Brexit. Her support of Brexit during these debates made her popular with the Conservative party members who selected her as prime minister during this leadership election.


title: Liz Truss

text: On culture, Truss has said that the Conservative Party should "reject the zero-sum game of identity politics, we reject the illiberalism of cancel culture, and we reject the soft bigotry of low expectations that holds so many people back". She has also suggested that Britain should not ignore the history of the British Empire, but should embrace the country's history "warts and all" if it is to compete with hostile states. In 2021, Truss voted to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland and abstained from voting on the introduction of "buffer zones" outside of abortion clinics.


title: Liz Truss

text: On LGBTQ+ rights, Truss, according to Reuters, voted for gay marriage and has never voted against LGBTQ+ rights, but has also moved to limit transgender rights. She spoke against gender self-identification, stating that "medical checks are important". She said that she agreed that "only women have a cervix". She also stated that the government departments should withdraw from Stonewall's diversity champions scheme. Despite initially supporting single-sex services being restricted on the basis of biological sex, she later said in February 2022 that the Government was not interested in enacting such a measure.


title: Liz Truss

text: As environment secretary, Truss supported a new strategy on bees and other pollinators, and advocated for gardeners to reduce lawnmower use to reduce impacts on them (see Environment Secretary section for more details).


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss signed the Conservative Environment Pledge on the website of the Conservative Environment Network (CEN), which has the support of 127 Conservative MPs. By signing the CEN pledge, Truss committed to achieving the UK's net-zero target on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and in 2022, said that she wanted to do this "in a way that doesn't harm businesses or consumers". As part of the energy crisis measures, a temporary suspension of green levies on domestic bills starting on 1 October was announced by the Government, with schemes previously funded by the levies now being funded by government.


title: Liz Truss

text: As reported in "The Daily Telegraph", Truss planned to scrap an environmental rule called the "nutrient neutrality" requirement. This rule requires details from the developers about how their proposals might pollute rivers and wetlands and is implemented by the non-departmental public body Natural England. UK Government support for nutrient neutrality is outlined in a policy paper from March 2022 "Nutrient pollution: reducing the impact on protected sites".


title: Liz Truss

text: As part of a two-year plan to ensure British energy security, Truss's government issued the 33rd round of offshore licences on 7 October 2022 (the first since 2019–2020) with as many as 100 set to be awarded. Nearly 900 locations are being offered for exploration, with a fast-track for parts of the North Sea near existing infrastructure. Opposition has come from Greenpeace, among others, who say that this energy policy benefits fossil-fuel companies and will have little impact on prices.


title: Liz Truss

text: The ban on fracking for shale gas was lifted in September 2022 as the moratorium in place since 2019 was scrapped. The lifting of the ban has given companies the go-ahead to apply for planning permission to extract shale gas in the U.K. Fracking was banned by the government in November 2019 after a report by the Oil and Gas Authority found that it was not possible at that time to predict the probability or strength of earthquakes caused by fracking.


title: Liz Truss

text: While PM, Truss was wanting to ban solar farms from about 58% of agricultural land. In October 2022, her spokesperson confirmed that plans to ban solar farming from agricultural land were going ahead. While not against the use of solar panels, in August 2022 Truss said that she thought that it was "one of the most depressing sights" to see fields full of solar panels, instead of being full of crops or livestock. She has proposed that solar panel use should be restricted to commercial roofs.


title: Liz Truss

text: Truss has supported the construction of small modular reactors and large nuclear power facilities in different parts of the United Kingdom. While foreign secretary, she cautioned against Chinese involvement in British infrastructure, including nuclear power stations.


title: Liz Truss

text: As outlined in the Government's Hydrogen Strategy and included as part of Truss's energy crisis solutions, building hydrogen production facilities was to be a key part of the UK energy supply. A company has been given the green light to build a 6 Megawatt electrolyser at the Sizewell nuclear power stations site and will involve the Freeport East Hydrogen Hub in Felixstowe/Harwich. Hydrogen production can involve water generation, called "green", or fossil fuel generation, called "grey" and "blue".


title: Liz Truss

text: A press release from Truss and the FCDO, after the COP26 summit in Glasgow, ended by saying that the UK was committed to supporting green enterprises and would help countries globally to deliver green, sustainable growth and economic development, while a statement by Truss at the end of a G7 foreign and development ministers' meeting in December 2021 outlined a commitment from them to work together to keep to the COP27 target for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.


title: Liz Truss

text: As part of the Growth Plan set out by Government in September 2022, proposals were made to limit the ability of councils in England to block the construction of onshore windfarms, a reversal of policy implemented in 2016 as part of the National Planning Policy Framework. The Government said that it would bring UK planning policy for onshore wind farming in line with existing rules, which could allow infrastructure to be more easily deployed.


title: Liz Truss

text: In 2000, Truss married Hugh O'Leary, a fellow accountant; the couple have two daughters. From 2004 until mid-2005, she had an extramarital affair with the married MP Mark Field, whom the Conservative Party had appointed as her political mentor. She remains married to O'Leary.


title: Liz Truss

text: In 2022, Truss said: "I share the values of the Christian faith and the Church of England, but I'm not a regular practising religious person."


title: Mona Lisa

text: The Mona Lisa ( ; or ; ) is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The painting has been definitively identified to depict Italian noblewoman Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. It is painted in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel. Leonardo never gave the painting to the Giocondo family, and later it is believed he left it in his will to his favored apprentice Salaì. It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The painting's global fame and popularity stem from its 1911 theft by Vincenzo Peruggia, who attributed his actions to Italian patriotism – a belief that the painting should belong to Italy. The theft and subsequent recovery in 1914 generated unprecedented publicity for an art theft, and led to the publication of numerous cultural depictions such as the 1915 opera "Mona Lisa", two early 1930s films about the theft ("The Theft of the Mona Lisa" and "Arsène Lupin") and the popular song "Mona Lisa" recorded by Nat King Cole – one of the most successful songs of the 1950s.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The "Mona Lisa" is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the highest-known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962 (equivalent to $870 million in 2021).


title: Mona Lisa

text: The title of the painting, which is known in English as "Mona Lisa", is based on the presumption that it depicts Lisa del Giocondo, although her likeness is uncertain. Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote that "Leonardo undertook to paint, for Francesco del Giocondo, the portrait of Mona Lisa, his wife." in Italian is a polite form of address originating as —similar to "Ma'am", "Madam", or "my lady" in English. This became , and its contraction . The title of the painting, though traditionally spelled "Mona" in English, is spelled in Italian as "Monna Lisa" ("" being a vulgarity in Italian), but this is rare in English.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany, and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The painting is thought to have been commissioned for their new home, and to celebrate the birth of their second son, Andrea. The Italian name for the painting, , means 'jocund' ('happy' or 'jovial') or, literally, 'the jocund one', a pun on the feminine form of Lisa's married name, Giocondo. In French, the title has the same meaning.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Vasari's account of the "Mona Lisa" comes from his biography of Leonardo published in 1550, 31 years after the artist's death. It has long been the best-known source of information on the provenance of the work and identity of the sitter. Leonardo's assistant Salaì, at his death in 1524, owned a portrait which in his personal papers was named "la Gioconda", a painting bequeathed to him by Leonardo.


title: Mona Lisa

text: That Leonardo painted such a work, and its date, were confirmed in 2005 when a scholar at Heidelberg University discovered a marginal note in a 1477 printing of a volume by ancient Roman philosopher Cicero. Dated October 1503, the note was written by Leonardo's contemporary Agostino Vespucci. This note likens Leonardo to renowned Greek painter Apelles, who is mentioned in the text, and states that Leonardo was at that time working on a painting of Lisa del Giocondo.


title: Mona Lisa

text: In response to the announcement of the discovery of this document, Vincent Delieuvin, the Louvre representative, stated "Leonardo da Vinci was painting, in 1503, the portrait of a Florentine lady by the name of Lisa del Giocondo. About this we are now certain. Unfortunately, we cannot be absolutely certain that this portrait of Lisa del Giocondo is the painting of the Louvre."


title: Mona Lisa

text: The catalogue raisonné "Leonardo da Vinci" (2019) confirms that the painting likely depicts Lisa del Giocondo, with Isabella d'Este being the only plausible alternative. Scholars have developed several alternative views, arguing that Lisa del Giocondo was the subject of a different portrait, and identifying at least four other paintings referred to by Vasari as the "Mona Lisa". Several other people have been proposed as the subject of the painting, including Isabella of Aragon, Cecilia Gallerani, Costanza d'Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla, Pacifica Brandano/Brandino, Isabela Gualanda, Caterina Sforza, Bianca Giovanna Sforza, Salaì, and even Leonardo himself. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud theorized that Leonardo imparted an approving smile from his mother, Caterina, onto the "Mona Lisa" and other works.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Isabella d'Este (1474–1539) was Margravine of Mantua and the most famous patron of the arts of her time. Leonardo was her sister Beatrice d'Este's court painter in the Duchy of Milan. In 1499, after the expulsion of the Sforza (his employers), Leonardo fled to the court of Isabella d'Este. Over a period of three months, Leonardo made several portrait drawings of Isabella (documented by letters). One of these drawings, a profile drawing, is preserved in the Louvre and shows similarities.


title: Mona Lisa

text: From the subsequent years 1501 to 1506, several letters survive in which Isabella—directly and through agents—pursued Leonardo with demands for the promised execution of the (oil) portrait (and her agents promised or also confirmed Leonardo's commencement). The "Mona Lisa" falls precisely within this period. In 1504 Isabella d'Este announced more interest in another motif, which is consistent with the whereabouts of the painting called "Mona Lisa" with Leonardo.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The hierarchical society of the Renaissance makes the portrait of an upper-class noblewoman more likely than the wife of a modestly merchant, especially for the "Mona Lisa".


title: Mona Lisa

text: The Louvre's caveat is Isabella d'Este's alleged blonde hair. Yet Isabella's portraits "Ambras miniature" and "Isabella in Red" represent brown hair and also further similarities. Blonde hair is now only depicted in Titian's retrospective portrait "Isabella in Black". Despite its circulation, this identification is disputed (outside the documentation of its own museum), as the head shows neither idealisation by beauty nor similarities with the two colour portraits mentioned above.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The "Mona Lisa" bears a strong resemblance to many Renaissance depictions of the Virgin Mary, who was at that time seen as an ideal for womanhood. The woman sits markedly upright in a "pozzetto" armchair with her arms folded, a sign of her reserved posture. Her gaze is fixed on the observer. The woman appears alive to an unusual extent, which Leonardo achieved by his method of not drawing outlines ("sfumato"). The soft blending creates an ambiguous mood "mainly in two features: the corners of the mouth, and the corners of the eyes".


title: Mona Lisa

text: The depiction of the sitter in three-quarter profile is similar to late 15th-century works by Lorenzo di Credi and Agnolo di Domenico del Mazziere. Zöllner notes that the sitter's general position can be traced back to Flemish models and that "in particular the vertical slices of columns at both sides of the panel had precedents in Flemish portraiture." Woods-Marsden cites Hans Memling's portrait of Benedetto Portinari (1487) or Italian imitations such as for the use of a "loggia", which has the effect of mediating between the sitter and the distant landscape, a feature missing from Leonardo's earlier portrait of "Ginevra de' Benci".


title: Mona Lisa

text: The painting was one of the first portraits to depict the sitter in front of an imaginary landscape, and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use aerial perspective. The enigmatic woman is portrayed seated in what appears to be an open loggia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind her, a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. Leonardo has chosen to place the horizon line not at the neck, as he did with "Ginevra de' Benci", but on a level with the eyes, thus linking the figure with the landscape and emphasizing the mysterious nature of the painting.


title: Mona Lisa

text: "Mona Lisa" has no clearly visible eyebrows or eyelashes, although Vasari describes the eyebrows in detail. In 2007, French engineer Pascal Cotte announced that his ultra-high resolution scans of the painting provide evidence that "Mona Lisa" was originally painted with eyelashes and eyebrows, but that these had gradually disappeared over time, perhaps as a result of overcleaning. Cotte discovered the painting had been reworked several times, with changes made to the size of the Mona Lisa's face and the direction of her gaze. He also found that in one layer the subject was depicted wearing numerous hairpins and a headdress adorned with pearls which was later scrubbed out and overpainted.


title: Mona Lisa

text: There has been much speculation regarding the painting's model and landscape. For example, Leonardo probably painted his model faithfully since her beauty is not seen as being among the best, "even when measured by late quattrocento (15th century) or even twenty-first century standards." Some art historians in Eastern art, such as Yukio Yashiro, argue that the landscape in the background of the picture was influenced by Chinese paintings, but this thesis has been contested for lack of clear evidence.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Research in 2003 by Professor Margaret Livingstone of Harvard University said that Mona Lisa's smile disappears when observed with direct vision, known as foveal. Because of the way the human eye processes visual information, it is less suited to pick up shadows directly; however, peripheral vision can pick up shadows well.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Research in 2008 by a geomorphology professor at Urbino University and an artist-photographer revealed likenesses of "Mona Lisa"s landscapes to some views in the Montefeltro region in the Italian provinces of Pesaro and Urbino, and Rimini.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Of Leonardo da Vinci's works, the "Mona Lisa" is the only portrait whose authenticity has never been seriously questioned, and one of four works – the others being "Saint Jerome in the Wilderness", "Adoration of the Magi" and "The Last Supper" – whose attribution has avoided controversy. He had begun working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the model of the "Mona Lisa", by October 1503. It is believed by some that the "Mona Lisa" was begun in 1503 or 1504 in Florence. Although the Louvre states that it was "doubtless painted between 1503 and 1506", art historian Martin Kemp says that there are some difficulties in confirming the dates with certainty. Alessandro Vezzosi believes that the painting is characteristic of Leonardo's style in the final years of his life, post-1513. Other academics argue that, given the historical documentation, Leonardo would have painted the work from 1513. According to Vasari, "after he had lingered over it four years, [he] left it unfinished". In 1516, Leonardo was invited by King Francis I to work at the Clos Lucé near the Château d'Amboise; it is believed that he took the "Mona Lisa" with him and continued to work on it after he moved to France. Art historian Carmen C. Bambach has concluded that Leonardo probably continued refining the work until 1516 or 1517. Leonardo's right hand was paralytic circa 1517, which may indicate why he left the "Mona Lisa" unfinished.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Circa 1505, Raphael executed a pen-and-ink sketch, in which the columns flanking the subject are more apparent. Experts universally agree that it is based on Leonardo's portrait. Other later copies of the "Mona Lisa", such as those in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design and The Walters Art Museum, also display large flanking columns. As a result, it was thought that the "Mona Lisa" had been trimmed. However, by 1993, Frank Zöllner observed that the painting surface had never been trimmed; this was confirmed through a series of tests in 2004. In view of this, Vincent Delieuvin, curator of 16th-century Italian painting at the Louvre, states that the sketch and these other copies must have been inspired by another version, while Zöllner states that the sketch may be after another Leonardo portrait of the same subject.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The record of an October 1517 visit by Louis d'Aragon states that the "Mona Lisa" was executed for the deceased Giuliano de' Medici, Leonardo's steward at Belvedere, Vienna, between 1513 and 1516—but this was likely an error. According to Vasari, the painting was created for the model's husband, Francesco del Giocondo. A number of experts have argued that Leonardo made two versions (because of the uncertainty concerning its dating and commissioner, as well as its fate following Leonardo's death in 1519, and the difference of details in Raphael's sketch—which may be explained by the possibility that he made the sketch from memory). The hypothetical first portrait, displaying prominent columns, would have been commissioned by Giocondo circa 1503, and left unfinished in Leonardo's pupil and assistant Salaì's possession until his death in 1524. The second, commissioned by Giuliano de' Medici circa 1513, would have been sold by Salaì to Francis I in 1518 and is the one in the Louvre today. Others believe that there was only one true "Mona Lisa", but are divided as to the two aforementioned fates. At some point in the 16th century, a varnish was applied to the painting. It was kept at the Palace of Fontainebleau until Louis XIV moved it to the Palace of Versailles, where it remained until the French Revolution. In 1797, it went on permanent display at the Louvre.


title: Mona Lisa

text: After the French Revolution, the painting was moved to the Louvre, but spent a brief period in the bedroom of Napoleon (d. 1821) in the Tuileries Palace. The "Mona Lisa" was not widely known outside the art world, but in the 1860s, a portion of the French intelligentsia began to hail it as a masterwork of Renaissance painting.


title: Mona Lisa

text: During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the painting was moved from the Louvre to the Brest Arsenal.


title: Mona Lisa

text: In 1911, the painting was still not popular among the lay-public. On 21 August 1911, the painting was stolen from the Louvre. The painting was first missed the next day by painter Louis Béroud. After some confusion as to whether the painting was being photographed somewhere, the Louvre was closed for a week for investigation. French poet Guillaume Apollinaire came under suspicion and was arrested and imprisoned. Apollinaire implicated his friend Pablo Picasso, who was brought in for questioning. Both were later exonerated. The real culprit was Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, who had helped construct the painting's glass case. He carried out the theft by entering the building during regular hours, hiding in a broom closet, and walking out with the painting hidden under his coat after the museum had closed.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Peruggia was an Italian patriot who believed that Leonardo's painting should have been returned to an Italian museum. Peruggia may have been motivated by an associate whose copies of the original would significantly rise in value after the painting's theft. After having kept the "Mona Lisa" in his apartment for two years, Peruggia grew impatient and was caught when he attempted to sell it to Giovanni Poggi, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was exhibited in the Uffizi Gallery for over two weeks and returned to the Louvre on 4 January 1914. Peruggia served six months in prison for the crime and was hailed for his patriotism in Italy. A year after the theft, "Saturday Evening Post" journalist Karl Decker wrote that he met an alleged accomplice named Eduardo de Valfierno, who claimed to have masterminded the theft. Forger Yves Chaudron was to have created six copies of the painting to sell in the US while concealing the location of the original. Decker published this account of the theft in 1932.


title: Mona Lisa

text: During World War II, it was again removed from the Louvre and taken first to the Château d'Amboise, then to the Loc-Dieu Abbey and Château de Chambord, then finally to the Ingres Museum in Montauban.


title: Mona Lisa

text: On 30 December 1956, Bolivian Ugo Ungaza Villegas threw a rock at the "Mona Lisa" while it was on display at the Louvre. He did so with such force that it shattered the glass case and dislodged a speck of pigment near the left elbow. The painting was protected by glass because a few years earlier a man who claimed to be in love with the painting had cut it with a razor blade and tried to steal it.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Since then, bulletproof glass has been used to shield the painting from any further attacks. Subsequently, on 21 April 1974, while the painting was on display at the Tokyo National Museum, a woman sprayed it with red paint as a protest against that museum's failure to provide access for disabled people. On 2 August 2009, a Russian woman, distraught over being denied French citizenship, threw a ceramic teacup purchased at the Louvre; the vessel shattered against the glass enclosure. In both cases, the painting was undamaged.


title: Mona Lisa

text: In recent decades, the painting has been temporarily moved to accommodate renovations to the Louvre on three occasions: between 1992 and 1995, from 2001 to 2005, and again in 2019. A new queuing system introduced in 2019 reduces the amount of time museum visitors have to wait in line to see the painting. After going through the queue, a group has about 30 seconds to see the painting.


title: Mona Lisa

text: On 29 May 2022, a male activist, disguised as a woman in a wheelchair, threw cake at the protective glass covering the painting in an apparent attempt to raise awareness for climate change. The painting was not damaged. The man was arrested and placed in psychiatric care in the police headquarters. An investigation was opened after the Louvre filed a complaint.


title: Mona Lisa

text: In the early 21st century, French scientist Pascal Cotte hypothesized a hidden portrait underneath the surface of the painting. He analyzed the painting in the Louvre with reflective light technology beginning in 2004, and produced circumstantial evidence for his theory. Cotte admits that his investigation was carried out only in support of his hypotheses and should not be considered as definitive proof. The underlying portrait appears to be of a model looking to the side, and lacks flanking columns, but does not fit with historical descriptions of the painting. Both Vasari and Gian Paolo Lomazzo describe the subject as smiling, unlike the subject in Cotte's supposed portrait. In 2020, Cotte published a study alleging that the painting has an underdrawing, transferred from a preparatory drawing via the "spolvero" technique.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The "Mona Lisa" has survived for more than 500 years, and an international commission convened in 1952 noted that "the picture is in a remarkable state of preservation." It has never been fully restored, so the current condition is partly due to a variety of conservation treatments the painting has undergone. A detailed analysis in 1933 by Madame de Gironde revealed that earlier restorers had "acted with a great deal of restraint." Nevertheless, applications of varnish made to the painting had darkened even by the end of the 16th century, and an aggressive 1809 cleaning and revarnishing removed some of the uppermost portion of the paint layer, resulting in a washed-out appearance to the face of the figure. Despite the treatments, the "Mona Lisa" has been well cared for throughout its history, and although the panel's warping caused the curators "some worry", the 2004–05 conservation team was optimistic about the future of the work.


title: Mona Lisa

text: At some point, the "Mona Lisa" was removed from its original frame. The unconstrained poplar panel warped freely with changes in humidity, and as a result, a crack developed near the top of the panel, extending down to the hairline of the figure. In the mid-18th century to early 19th century, two butterfly-shaped walnut braces were inserted into the back of the panel to a depth of about one third the thickness of the panel. This intervention was skilfully executed, and successfully stabilized the crack. Sometime between 1888 and 1905, or perhaps during the picture's theft, the upper brace fell out. A later restorer glued and lined the resulting socket and crack with cloth.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The picture is kept under strict, climate-controlled conditions in its bulletproof glass case. The humidity is maintained at 50% ±10%, and the temperature is maintained between 18 and 21 °C. To compensate for fluctuations in relative humidity, the case is supplemented with a bed of silica gel treated to provide 55% relative humidity.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Because the "Mona Lisa"s poplar support expands and contracts with changes in humidity, the picture has experienced some warping. In response to warping and swelling experienced during its storage during World War II, and to prepare the picture for an exhibit to honour the anniversary of Leonardo's 500th birthday, the "Mona Lisa" was fitted in 1951 with a flexible oak frame with beech crosspieces. This flexible frame, which is used in addition to the decorative frame described below, exerts pressure on the panel to keep it from warping further. In 1970, the beech crosspieces were switched to maple after it was found that the beechwood had been infested with insects. In 2004–05, a conservation and study team replaced the maple crosspieces with sycamore ones, and an additional metal crosspiece was added for scientific measurement of the panel's warp.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The "Mona Lisa" has had many different decorative frames in its history, owing to changes in taste over the centuries. In 1909, the art collector Comtesse de Béhague gave the portrait its current frame, a Renaissance-era work consistent with the historical period of the "Mona Lisa". The edges of the painting have been trimmed at least once in its history to fit the picture into various frames, but no part of the original paint layer has been trimmed.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The first and most extensive recorded cleaning, revarnishing, and touch-up of the "Mona Lisa" was an 1809 wash and revarnishing undertaken by Jean-Marie Hooghstoel, who was responsible for restoration of paintings for the galleries of the Musée Napoléon. The work involved cleaning with spirits, touch-up of colour, and revarnishing the painting. In 1906, Louvre restorer Eugène Denizard performed watercolour retouches on areas of the paint layer disturbed by the crack in the panel. Denizard also retouched the edges of the picture with varnish, to mask areas that had been covered initially by an older frame. In 1913, when the painting was recovered after its theft, Denizard was again called upon to work on the "Mona Lisa". Denizard was directed to clean the picture without solvent, and to lightly touch up several scratches to the painting with watercolour. In 1952, the varnish layer over the background in the painting was evened out. After the second 1956 attack, restorer Jean-Gabriel Goulinat was directed to touch up the damage to "Mona Lisa"s left elbow with watercolour.


title: Mona Lisa

text: In 1977, a new insect infestation was discovered in the back of the panel as a result of crosspieces installed to keep the painting from warping. This was treated on the spot with carbon tetrachloride, and later with an ethylene oxide treatment. In 1985, the spot was again treated with carbon tetrachloride as a preventive measure.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Using modern digital filters and advanced AI methods original features of Monalisa's portrait are being restored as close as possible to the original painting as shown on the right.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The white patches are removed from the facial portion of the original digital image with the help of advanced digital filters.


title: Mona Lisa

text: On 6 April 2005—following a period of curatorial maintenance, recording, and analysis—the painting was moved to a new location within the museum's Salle des États. It is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure behind bulletproof glass. Since 2005 the painting has been illuminated by an LED lamp, and in 2013 a new 20 watt LED lamp was installed, specially designed for this painting. The lamp has a Colour Rendering Index up to 98, and minimizes infrared and ultraviolet radiation which could otherwise degrade the painting. The renovation of the gallery where the painting now resides was financed by the Japanese broadcaster Nippon Television. As of 2019, about 10.2 million people view the painting at the Louvre each year.


title: Mona Lisa

text: On the 500th anniversary of the master's death, the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit of Leonardo works, from 24 October 2019 to 24 February 2020. The "Mona Lisa" was not included because it is in such great demand among visitors to the museum; the painting remained on display in its gallery.


title: Mona Lisa

text: The "Mona Lisa" began influencing contemporary Florentine painting even before its completion. Raphael, who had been to Leonardo's workshop several times, promptly used elements of the portrait's composition and format in several of his works, such as "Young Woman with Unicorn" (c. 1506), and "Portrait of Maddalena Doni" (c. 1506). Later paintings by Raphael, such as (1515–16) and "Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione" (c. 1514–15), continued to borrow from Leonardo's painting. Zollner states that "None of Leonardo's works would exert more influence upon the evolution of the genre than the "Mona Lisa". It became the definitive example of the Renaissance portrait and perhaps for this reason is seen not just as the likeness of a real person, but also as the embodiment of an ideal."


title: Mona Lisa

text: Early commentators such as Vasari and André Félibien praised the picture for its realism, but by the Victorian era, writers began to regard the "Mona Lisa" as imbued with a sense of mystery and romance. In 1859, Théophile Gautier wrote that the "Mona Lisa" was a "sphinx of beauty who smiles so mysteriously" and that "Beneath the form expressed one feels a thought that is vague, infinite, inexpressible. One is moved, troubled ... repressed desires, hopes that drive one to despair, stir painfully." Walter Pater's famous essay of 1869 described the sitter as "older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in the deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her."


title: Mona Lisa

text: By the early 20th century, some critics started to feel the painting had become a repository for subjective exegeses and theories. Upon the painting's theft in 1911, Renaissance historian Bernard Berenson admitted that it had "simply become an incubus, and [he] was glad to be rid of her." Jean Metzinger's "Le goûter (Tea Time)" was exhibited at the 1911 Salon d'Automne and was sarcastically described as "la Joconde à la cuiller" (Mona Lisa with a spoon) by art critic Louis Vauxcelles on the front page of Gil Blas. André Salmon subsequently described the painting as "The Mona Lisa of Cubism".


title: Mona Lisa

text: The avant-garde art world has made note of the "Mona Lisa"s undeniable popularity. Because of the painting's overwhelming stature, Dadaists and Surrealists often produce modifications and caricatures. In 1883, "Le rire," an image of a "Mona Lisa" smoking a pipe, by Sapeck (Eugène Bataille), was shown at the "Incoherents" show in Paris. In 1919, Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential modern artists, created "L.H.O.O.Q.", a "Mona Lisa" parody made by adorning a cheap reproduction with a moustache and goatee. Duchamp added an inscription, which when read out loud in French sounds like "Elle a chaud au cul" meaning: "she has a hot ass", implying the woman in the painting is in a state of sexual excitement and intended as a Freudian joke. According to Rhonda R. Shearer, the apparent reproduction is in fact a copy partly modelled on Duchamp's own face.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Salvador Dalí, famous for his surrealist work, painted "Self portrait as Mona Lisa" in 1954. Andy Warhol created serigraph prints of multiple "Mona Lisa"s, called "Thirty Are Better than One", following the painting's visit to the United States in 1963. The French urban artist known pseudonymously as Invader has created versions of the "Mona Lisa" on city walls in Paris and Tokyo using a mosaic style. A 2014 "New Yorker" magazine cartoon parodies the supposed enigma of the "Mona Lisa" smile in an animation showing progressively more maniacal smiles.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Today the "Mona Lisa" is considered the most famous painting in the world, a destination painting, but until the 20th century it was simply one among many highly regarded artworks.


title: Mona Lisa

text: Once part of King Francis I of France's collection, the "Mona Lisa" was among the first artworks to be exhibited in the Louvre, which became a national museum after the French Revolution. Leonardo began to be revered as a genius, and the painting's popularity grew in the mid-19th century when French intelligentsia praised it as mysterious and a representation of the femme fatale. The Baedeker guide in 1878 called it "the most celebrated work of Leonardo in the Louvre", but the painting was known more by the intelligentsia than the general public.