Life behind the lens: Mary McCartney

Mary is the eldest child of Sir Paul and Linda McCartney

Mary McCartney is following in the footsteps of her late photographer mother.

The eldest daughter of Linda McCartney, and former Beatle Sir Paul, took the first official snaps of Tony and Cherie Blair's new baby, Leo.

Mary McCartney is a friend of Cherie Blair

Mary McCartney, 30, is a close personal friend of the prime minister's wife. Both have campaigned to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Like her late mother, who died of cancer two years ago, aged 56, she is a professional photographer and animal rights campaigner.

She runs the picture department at her famous father's multimillion-pound MPL organisation.

Previously, Mary's best-known images were of her mother, taken at the family's East Sussex home three weeks before Linda's death in 1998.

Last November, Mary McCartney helped launch the UK's largest anti-fur campaign with a photograph of a blood-streaked hand for the Respect for Animals campaign. The poster was entitled Hands Up - You Wear Fur.

Mary took the last photos of her mother

She said she got involved to help stop the resurgence of fur as a fashion accessory.

"The grim reality beneath the glamorous fashion facade is millions of animals are killed each year just for the fur on their backs."

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection has also used her work in campaigns, and she has snapped images for the glossy magazines Red, Frank, German Vogue and Australian Elle.

Namesake

Mary McCartney was named after her paternal grandmother, a nurse and midwife who died of cancer when Sir Paul was just 14.

She has a brother, James, a sister, fashion designer Stella, and a step-sister Heather, Linda's daughter from a previous marriage.

The family grew up on the McCartneys' farm near Rye, East Sussex, raised as vegetarians and surrounded by an ever-growing menagerie of cows, ducks, deer and wild boar.

She married television producer Alistair McDonald in September 1998 and had a son last year - her famous father's first grandchild.