A coal miner’s daughter who became a White House foreign policy adviser has been appointed chancellor of Durham University.
Dr Fiona Hill, who has worked for US presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, was selected on Monday to become the ceremonial head of the university in the county where she grew up.
She first came into the public eye when she testified against Mr Trump during his impeachment in 2019, accusing his Republican allies of pushing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Dr Hill spent her formative years in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, where her father was a former coal miner who worked as a hospital porter and her mother was a midwife. She has previously described her thirst for learning and said she would sit on the stairs at home reading encyclopaedias.
