She reads avidly and widely, from Greek tragedy to Truman Capote. She has identified her favourite literary passage as the "Grand Inquisitor" section of The Brothers Karamazov, an ambiguous dialogue about an imagined return of Christ to earth in Seville at the height of the Spanish inquisition. What this says about Laura is unclear; but it certainly distinguishes her from her husband, whose preferred recreational reading is the baseball scores and who would probably guess "Dusty Yevsky" was a former New York Yankees pitcher.The two first set eyes on each other in Midland, Laura's home town and financial capital of the Texas oil industry, where they attended the same middle school in the late 1950s. She was the only daughter of a successful builder, and describes her childhood as "slightly lonely" and uneventful - barring a road accident when she was 17 when she went through a stop sign, hit another car and killed its driver, a high-school friend. Charges were never brought, but to this day she flinches at mention of the incident.Early on, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. After leaving college, she taught at racially mixed elementary schools in Dallas and Houston.

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In 1973, she took a master's degree in library science from the University of Texas and moved to the state capital, Austin, as an elementary-school librarian. Four years later, she ran into George W again, at a barbecue thrown by mutual friends in Midland. On 5 November 1977, they married - and Laura found herself spending part of the honeymoon on the campaign trail as her husband made his failed quest for a congressional seat.Barbara and Jenna, the Bushes' twin daughters, arrived in 1981, but only after a difficult pregnancy and a long failure to start a family that had the couple on the brink of starting an adoption. Ever since, Laura has ferociously protected the privacy of the girls, taking a fortnight off to see them off to college last autumn as the campaign for the White House was nearing its climax.Throughout her husband's career, first in oil, then in politics, Laura has been an important backstage presence, a sounding board and source of advice - above all for George W's crucial decision to give up the booze. She disputes the bald ultimatum version, "It's either me or Jim Beam." She did, however, let it be known it was "necessary" for the family that he quit.

And so he did, cold, after a monster 40th birthday party hangover in Colorado in 1986.These days, Laura is a quiet brake on her husband when he gets cocky; "Bushieee," she will whisper when that maddening spoilt little boy's smirk becomes too frequent. "Rein it in, Bubba," she once smilingly reproached him on the campaign plane. During the agonising weeks of uncertainty after the election, she was calmness itself. "If it happens it happens, if not we'll be OK," was Laura's approach. The night it did happen, she went off to a routine board meeting of the Texas Book Festival, even as her husband awaited the promised concession call from Al Gore.Some believe she was a Democrat before she met her future President - though in the Texas of that time there was precious little practical difference between the two big parties Today, she gives little away about her political views.