About Kate Middleton

Kate Middleton, the girl from Berkshire who is now Prince William’s wife and the new Duchess of Cambridge, was dubbed "Waity Katie" for her patience during her long courtship, but will now one day become Queen.

Miss Middleton's wealthy middle-class background differed greatly from the elite aristocratic circle of European princesses often earmarked as potential brides for royal princes.

Early life

Born on January 9 1982, Catherine Elizabeth Middleton is the eldest child of businessman Michael and former air hostess Carole Middleton. The self-made millionaires live in a modern five-bedroom detached house in the hamlet of Chapel Row in Bucklebury parish near Newbury, Berkshire, and run a mail-order business called Party Pieces which sells toys and party paraphernalia.

Miss Middleton, who has two younger siblings, sister Pippa and brother James, was christened at the parish church of St Andrew's Bradfield in Berkshire, on June 20, 1982.

In May 1984, when Miss Middleton was two, the family moved to Amman in Jordan, where her father worked for two-and-a-half years. She attended a nursery school in Amman from the age of three. In September 1986 the Middletons returned to West Berkshire, and Miss Middleton started at St Andrew's - a private school in Pangbourne.

St Andrew's said she enjoyed "all aspects of school life", including academic subjects, music, drama and sport.

At the age of 13, she went to the £15,000-a-year Marlborough College in Wiltshire where she was a keen netball and hockey player. Described by Marlborough master Nicholas Sampson as a "bright, popular and extremely capable pupil", she studied chemistry, biology and art at A-level.

Miss Middleton left Marlborough College in July 2000 and went on a gap year, studying at the British Institute in Florence and also crewed on Round the World Challenge boats in the Solent.

Like Prince William, she went on a Raleigh International programme in Chile during her gap year. She began reading history of art at St Andrews in Fife in 2001, as did her husband, although he later switched to geography. The pair became friends, then flatmates, and their relationship blossomed into a romance around Christmas 2003.

After leaving university, she was keen to forge ahead with her own career, and set up a children's clothes firm. In November 2006, she joined fashion chain Jigsaw, owned by family friends Belle and John Robinson, as a part-time accessories buyer.

In April 2007, William and Miss Middleton briefly broke up, but reunited a few months later. And in November 2010, her long wait was over, when the prince popped the question during a holiday in Kenya, proposing with his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales’s sapphire engagement ring. They married on April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey.

Family

Miss Middleton was the first commoner to marry a prince close to the British throne in 350 years, since Anne Hyde wed the Duke of York, later James II, in 1660. She has a mix of middle and working class heritage, descended from a family of solicitors and landed gentry on her father's side and butchers, plasterers, road sweepers and domestic servants on her mother's. One of her mother's relations, James Harrison, was a coal miner in County Durham in 1819, the year that Queen Victoria was born.

There is a jailbird among the Middleton ancestors: her great-great-great grandfather Edward Thomas Glassborow, an ancestor of Miss Middleton's father Michael, was cited as an inmate at Holloway Prison in London in the 1881 census, according to Claudia Joseph's biography of Miss Middleton.

She is also distantly related to her husband. They are 15th cousins, linked through the Fairfax family in the 16th century, who were descended from Edward III.

Through the Martineau family, Miss Middleton is also connected to Harriet Martineau, the noted writer and journalist who was born in 1802. Martineau campaigned for women's rights and argued for an improvement in women's education, so that "marriage need not be their only object in life".

Miss Middleton's great-great-great-grandfather John Goldsmith, on her mother's side, was born in Maidstone, Kent and was a general labourer in 1882. Another great-great-great grandfather James Dorsett, born in Hammersmith, worked as a road sweeper in 1891.

Her family tree reveals that her great-great-grandmother Jane Hill, born in Hetton Le Hole, Tyne and Wear, was a domestic servant in 1897. William Middleton, her great-great-great-grandfather on her father's side, was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1807 and became the first in a long line of solicitors in 1838.

Style

The bride is known for her classic, stylish and often reserved appearance, although she has received criticism as well as praise for her style. The blue dress she wore for the engagement announcement created a wave of excitement among fashion commentators. Created by Brazilian-born designer Daniella Issa Helayel, the dress sold out within days of Kate wearing it, and brought back images of the young Princess of Wales in her engagement photographs wearing a slightly more conservative suit of a similar shade.

In the past, Miss Middleton's choice of attire has been criticised, with some describing her university wardrobe of cashmere sweaters and woollen skirts as "Thatcheresque". Favouring high street brands such as Whistles, Reiss and Topshop, the bride's fashion taste appears to be more off-the-peg than designer chic: while dining with the Duchess of Cornwall recently she wore a patterned Diane von Furstenberg dress matched with a jacket from Whistles and her signature knee-high black boots from LK Bennett, a brand also worn by her future mother-in-law.