Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown will join efforts to improve access to education and the internet as part of pro bono work following Labour's election loss in May, his spokesman said on Thursday.

Brown, who was prime minister between 2007 and 2010 and chancellor for a decade before that, has spent the summer writing a book on the global financial crisis and working in his Kirkcaldy parliamentary constituency in Scotland.

Brown will work on the Global Campaign for Education's High Level Panel on education for all, joining pop star Shakira and Nelson Mandela among those who have helped the organisation.

He will also join the board of the World Wide Web Foundation, which works to improve internet access in the developing world.

Gordon Brown's global work will focus on those areas where he believes he is best placed to make a difference, Brown's spokesman said.

The 59-year-old returned to the headlines this week with the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs in which Blair called the Scot brilliant, but maddening.

(Reporting by Matt Falloon)

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