{"id":418680,"date":"2025-09-12T14:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418680\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T14:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:44:11","slug":"being-born-in-north-east-england-gives-you-grit-says-fiona-hill-north-of-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/418680\/","title":{"rendered":"Being born in north-east England gives you grit, says Fiona Hill | North of England"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a \u201cresilience and grit\u201d that comes from being born in the north-east of England, says Fiona Hill, who went from a working-class childhood in County Durham<\/a> to a top intelligence job at the heart of the White House.<\/p>\n

But, she believes, it is also a big reason why she and other notable high achievers have had the success they have. The secret of success could be being from the north-east.<\/p>\n

Hill has talked to a number of figures from \u2013 or with strong links to \u2013 the north-east for her new Forged in the North podcast series, which will be launched at Durham book festival in October<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They include two global figures originally from the same part of Wallsend: the Cramlington primary school teacher turned superstar Sting<\/a>, and the Yale historian Paul Kennedy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s basically just listening to two people who seem on the surface so completely different but have this common origin story,\u201d says Hill.<\/p>\n

Other podcast guests are Lee Hall, the writer of Billy Elliot; Brendan Foster, the founder of the Great North Run; the north-east mayor, Kim McGuinness; the Dragons\u2019 Den entrepreneur Sara Davies; the dramatist Peter Straughan<\/a>; and the Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees.<\/p>\n

Hill was born and brought up in Bishop Auckland, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife. She and her accent went on to be a foreign affairs adviser to US presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump and she is considered one of the world\u2019s leading experts on Russia and Putin.<\/p>\n

Last year she was named as one of three advisers to oversee the UK government\u2019s strategic defence review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new series is born, Hill says, of a belief that \u201ctoo much happens down in London, as if the rest of the country doesn\u2019t exist\u201d.<\/p>\n

The hope is to \u201cput the spotlight on a region that is normally only in the headlines for something going wrong: child poverty, the lowest life expectancy, worst nutrition\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe north-east is home of the Industrial Revolution \u2013 literally the engines of prosperity. Two hundred years ago, it was the forefront of innovation, and we\u2019re saying, there\u2019s still a lot of potential for innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill turns 60 this year and is planning a trip back to the north-east from her home in the US. She says: \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to walk along a portion of Hadrian\u2019s Wall, I want to go back up the Northumberland coast. I want to come back for all the stories and storytelling I remember as a kid from the region.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in this context that the idea of the podcast series came about, with the aim of telling stories about the north \u201cnot just how it was, but how it is and how it might be\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many cultural figures have talked passionately about the importance of where they are from. The Hull-born playwright Richard Bean once said<\/a>: \u201cThank God I wasn\u2019t born in Guildford. Thank God I was born somewhere there is tragedy and comedy every other second.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hill says coming from the north-east gives \u201ca certain resilience and grit\u201d. \u201cBeing from the north-east grounds you, it\u2019s an anchor, a solid base with a strong sense of what\u2019s right and wrong and a clear perspective and values.\u201d<\/p>\n

She points to a recent poll<\/a> revealing how people from the north-east have a stronger attachment to their region than other parts of England. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of solidarity that\u2019s been forged in adversity. Everyone\u2019s thrown all kinds of rubbish at the north historically \u2026 but it has a resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n

The importance of investing in people while they are young is a theme of the podcast discussions, says Hill, who got a grant from the Durham Miners\u2019 Association to take a Russian language course to pursue her ambition to go to university.<\/p>\n

Straughan and Hall got started with enterprise grants and through locally funded theatres. Interestingly, McGuinness and Davies, both younger interviewees, say they had to make their own luck, with Davies using her savings to start her successful business.<\/p>\n

McGuinness says the series resonated with her ambition for the north-east to be a cultural powerhouse. \u201cThis important podcast shines a light on how with the right support, talent can truly thrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cFunding in our region\u2019s art sector has been outpaced by the south for some time. I\u2019m determined to fix that cultural chasm and the cycle of regional inequality, positioning the north-east as a strong contender in the UK economy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a \u201cresilience and grit\u201d that comes from being born in the north-east of England, says Fiona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-418680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115191864781452054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}