Fiona Hill

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the foreign affairs specialist Fiona Hill. Her life brings together three countries, Britain, where she was born, Russia, which she has made her life's work, and the United States, where she lives and has advised Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and was an expert witness at the latter's first impeachment. She grew up in the northeast of England in the 1970s and early 80s and witnessed the region's painful deindustrialisation firsthand. Her father, a former coal miner, told her, there's nothing for you here, pet. She couldn't take up the scholarship she won to the local private school because her family couldn't afford the uniform and books, but she forged a path to university to study Russian language and history. She spent the subsequent decades charting Russia's transition from decaying industrial giant to a new kind of 21st century superpower and chronicled the stories of those who, like her own community, had been left behind. She moved to Washington, D.C. and became an American citizen. There she is an authority on Russia's new power base built on energy and information and the man who controls it, Vladimir Putin. Since the invasion of Ukraine, she's answered dozens of media invitations to share her expertise. She says, people like me who move literally from the coal house to the White House tend to be the exception that proves the rule of how difficult it is to get ahead even in the best of times. Yet everyone should have the same and equal opportunity for social mobility, whether they're born in coal country or in the capital city. Fiona Hill, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Oh, thanks so much. It's great to be here.

Fiona Hill2:21

Oh.

Presenter2:23

So Fiona, as far back as two thousand seven, you were warning the West about Vladimir Putin's intentions, but the people in power didn't seem to be listening to you as the war in Ukraine continues to rage. How do you deal with that on a personal level?

Fiona Hill2:38

Well it's quite heavyweight to be honest and part of the issue that I've always experienced in these jobs, you mentioned back in two thousand seven when I was the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia under President George W Bush is you couldn't say to the President, look on say June the second of two thousand eight, X is going to happen in this kind of way, this is how it's going to unfold, instead you're basically laying out there trends and saying look we can see here that Vladimir Putin and the people around him have a specific perspective, we can see that they are focused on this set of issues, these larger trends are underway and all of this comes together producing a kind of likely effect that something not particularly pleasant is going to happen.

Presenter3:25

When you came to public attention during Donald Trump's impeachment, people started talking about your accent, Fiona. Do you think it held you back when you were starting out?

Fiona Hill3:34

It certainly did in the UK context. I mean, the irony is when I moved to the United States, it was quite different. And just recently, my old boss, Donald Trump, had this quote about me basically saying, she'd be nothing without that accent. You're a deep state stiff with a nice accent. Which is really very funny because, of course, in the UK context, the connotations of the North East accent were always working class. And then, as I kind of moved on and progressed onto going on to university and going to interviews, I immediately had people wincing with the accent. I had many suggestions that I should go to elocution lessons. And I immediately started, you know, I used to joke with my dad, he'd have his telephone voice on. And I'd listen carefully that my dad, when he picked up the telephone, would be another person. And so I thought adapting dad's telephone voice, you know, might work a bit, but it always just sounded a little bit silly. And that kind of feeling that, you know, the accent was going to follow you around and not wanting to lose it either because it's part of you.

Presenter3:47

Yeah.

Presenter3:50

Yeah.

Speaker 14:22

Mm-hmm.

Presenter4:29

Fiona, we've got a lot to dig into today, and of course your discs as well. So let's get started, shall we, with your first. What's your first selection to take to the island today?

Fiona Hill4:38

Message in a Bottle from the album Request of the Bonque was the first actual LP back in the day that I bought with my own money. It was my birthday money for turning fifteen and my sister and I played it on our little record player in our bedroom over and over again until my dad actually asked us to stop. And we used to sit around holding hairbrushes.

Fiona Hill4:58

As one did, you know, singing towards the window, you know, just a castaway, lost at sea, because we kind of felt like that, you know, as teens. It's kind of a teenage anthem.

Speaker 45:07

I'll send an SOIs to the world I'll send an SOIs to the world I hope that Sony won't get smiled

Speaker 45:17

Hope that someone gets mine

Speaker 45:20

Hope that someone gets my message in a bottle, yeah

Speaker 45:29

They're searching apart, yes.

Presenter5:36

The police and message in a bottle. So Fiona Hill, let's go back to the beginning then. You were born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, in 1965, and your father Alfred worked as a hospital porter for most of his life, but before that he had been a miner and he was from a mining family. So that was very much his identity, wasn't it?

Fiona Hill5:54

It was. I mean, my dad always said, once a miner, always a miner. And he had left school at 14 to become a coal miner. And this kind of shaped the psyche around as well. My father was always talking about, you know, how difficult mining was. And I kept wondering, in some respects, then why he romanticised it. But it was the camaraderie, it was the community and the sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself. And my father would just find the humour in everything. You know, for one rockfall that my dad had been in, they'd all had to crawl through the area in which basically the men and the pit ponies all went to the toilet, you know, basically to put it politely. And my dad said, it's just the worst thing ever. And he said, I was really lucky that I wasn't like the other men. They all had these big moustaches and beards. And he said, they all came out and they'd have to get their faces all over it. And he said, I said to them afterwards, I kept telling you to shave off that moustache and that beard. I told you, get yourselves into trouble at some point. And he would act it out. So you had the physical comedy aspect of it as well. And we'd all just like fall about laughing. And then, really, when you thought about it, this wasn't especially funny.

Speaker 16:04

A round is ball.

Speaker 16:41

Yeah.

Speaker 16:48

Affairs

Fiona Hill6:54

I want to ask about your mum as well, June. She was a midwife. What was she like? She was. Now, for her, she loved her job. She is one of that first crop of National Health Service midwifes that we have a whole television series about. She delivered hundreds of babies all over the place. Didn't you go with her once to deliver baby? Down the street, one of my neighbours went into labour and they weren't going to be able to get the hospital in time, and she dragged me over with her. And yeah, that really put me off having children. I think, you know, if anybody ever wants to, you know, kind of helping your mother deliver baby at age 14.

Presenter7:12

Blood baby.

Presenter7:23

Devil.

Fiona Hill7:28

I was just horrified by the whole process.

Presenter7:31

I think we'd better hear disc number two, Fiona. What's it gonna be?

Fiona Hill7:34

Well, disc number two is something that really reminds me of my dad. It's Ella Fitzgerald, it's only a paper moon.

Fiona Hill7:41

My dad knew all of the words and would sing along to it. And he had a very nice baritone and he'd he would lead all of us in a chorus. And it's just a great song because it's about the artificiality of life unless somebody believes in you and loves you. And that's you know, I felt a lot of love from my parents.

Speaker 47:56

Say it's only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn't be make-believe If you believed in me

Speaker 48:11

Yes, it's only a canvas sky Hanging over a muslin tree.

Speaker 48:19

But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me.

Presenter8:25

It's Only a Paper Moon. Ella FitzGerald. Sophie O'Neill Hill, you were a bright kid and your parents were very keen to help you learn. How did they encourage you to do that?

Fiona Hill8:34

They invested in an entire set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I would spend an inordinate amount of time, this is rather sad, sitting on the stairs, which was the only kind of quiet place in the house, very small house, reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and looking things up. And this so the the complete set's huge. And did you accommodate it in your little house? My dad had a friend make some shells for us and they kind of blocked everything. You couldn't get into the bathroom because the shells stuck out through the bathroom door.

Presenter8:51

Who did you accommodate it in in your little house?

Presenter9:01

Most of my knowledge came from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now, your dad didn't earn much as a hospital porter, so your mum was the family breadwinner, but she had to give up work when you and your sister were born, which meant less money coming in. Your parents couldn't afford a T V and and I think that caused you some problems at school, I think.

Fiona Hill9:17

It did early on, yeah. While I was at elementary school it was the royal wedding between Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, and we were assigned to write about the wedding. But we had to write about what we saw.

Fiona Hill9:30

And my mum complained to the school and said, Well, we don't have a television. There's actually several people in the school didn't have a television. So, how are we going to do that?

Fiona Hill9:37

And they said, Well, then I suppose you'll fail the assignment And I mean I was quite young but I thought I don't want to fail the assignment, this isn't fair So I I thought well what can I do? And then the neighbours across the way they had a a colour television.

Fiona Hill9:49

And so I took my dad's radio. I stood on this patch of grass and I was kind of peering in, listening to the radio and watching it. And then they spotted me. But I was I was I'd already got a lot of way into it. They kinda closed the curtains. Because I don't think they realized it was me. They could just see so many

Speaker 19:54

Uh

Speaker 19:56

Yeah.

Presenter9:57

The lungs.

Speaker 19:57

Yeah.

Fiona Hill10:06

And so I ran in and kind of wrote down quickly everything that I had remembered. Yeah.

Presenter10:11

You passed your 11 plus in 1976. You came first in the class and you were offered a place at the local private school, but you just weren't able to take it up. Why not?

Fiona Hill10:22

Well,'cause my mum and dad just couldn't afford all the extras and they weren't included. I mean, it was actually, you know, generous scholarship. But, you know, sometimes it's that opportunity. You can't actually take the opportunity that comes along and that was also a failure in the uniform, yeah,'cause it was a uniform that was

Speaker 110:32

It's also very uniform.

Fiona Hill10:35

If you played sports, it was tennis rackets. There was also the bus fare because this wasn't the local comprehensive school.

Presenter10:41

They did want you to get on, though, your parents. They were very keen for that to happen. How did they kind of support you to find a a way forward on your own? That was different to that.

Fiona Hill10:44

Very

Fiona Hill10:50

Well, it's not just them, it's also County Durham. County Durham maintained through all of this its cultural budget and its educational budget. There were free school trips, there were school exchanges, you could go to museums. And I got all kinds of things because my parents signed me up.

Presenter11:06

It's time for some more music, Viona, your third choice today. What have you gone for?

Fiona Hill11:10

Well I've gone for the specials Ghost Town, which you know for me they were a really interesting group. They were all together making this fusion music. I love specials and all the kind of like the scar and the kind of two-tone music that came out of this. At the same time that this was a song that really summed up what it was like living in a northern town in the 1980s when everything was being shut down.

Speaker 411:31

This storm is coming like a ghost now.

Speaker 411:38

All the clubs are being closed down

Speaker 411:44

This place

Speaker 411:47

It's coming like a ghost

Speaker 411:56

I team on the dance floor.

Presenter12:01

Ghost Town by The Specials.

Presenter12:03

So Fiona Hill, you took your A-levels at the local comp. Why did you decide to study Russian for your degree?

Fiona Hill12:10

For anybody who's listening who's in their 50s and above, they might remember 1983. This was the war scare, basically over the stationing of new nuclear missiles in Europe. And it's Europe's version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I thought, well, I can't just kind of sit around here and do nothing. I should try to do something practical. I thought, maybe I'll just go and study Russian, which seemed a little preposterous, actually. But one of my father's cousins, who we called Uncle Charlie, Uncle Charlie Crabtree, he'd fought in World War II. He'd been in the Merchant Marine.

Fiona Hill12:44

During the convoys of taking supplies to the Soviet Union when they were allies in World War Two, and he couldn't understand it. He said, How did we go from basically being wartime allies to the Soviets wanting to bloody well blow us up? And he said to my dad,

Fiona Hill12:58

Yo, Fiona's good at languages, so she should go and learn Russian and just figure that out. And my dad came home and said, I said, Uncle Charlie, you thought you should go study Russian. I thought, yeah, I should.

Fiona Hill13:08

You had an interview at Oxford. How did it go? Terribly. I mean, first of all, my mum made me a dress for the it was which was a bit disastrous. It was kind of heraldic pattern and I looked like I'd been wearing crests. I looked like I was wearing wallpaper.

Speaker 113:18

Correct.

Fiona Hill13:21

And there were some girls already waiting on the kind of the wooden bench outside of the Oxford Don's office that was going to do the interview. And one of them I'd met when I was 13 and I was in an exchange to Germany. And she said, Fiona Hill, what are you doing here? And I thought, yeah, what am I doing here? And then, you know, I started to talk to her, trying to kind of, you know, smooth things over. And how are you? You know, how are things?

Fiona Hill13:47

The other two girls start wincing and then stickering at my accent. And then my name was called, and I was so flustered, I wasn't really kind of paying much attention. And one of the girls had a leg stuck out. Now, I don't know whether it had been stuck out. I kind of think she'd stuck it out, but you know, I was not paying attention sufficiently in any case because I was just sort of thinking, oh my god, nightmare. I'm so embarrassed. And they're looking up and down at my heraldic dress, and I feel really silly and out of place. And I step up and I fall over the other girl's leg into the door, smash my nose. My nose starts bleeding, and I open the door.

Fiona Hill14:18

And the Oxford Don professor lecturer looked at me and said, Oh dear, have you had an accident?

Presenter14:25

Oh, Fiona, let's hear your fourth choice. What have you gone for, and why?

Fiona Hill14:29

Uh we're going to hear Iggy Pop The Passenger. It's a song about riding around in a car. And nobody in my family had a car. Uh when I first got to America there's cars everywhere.

Fiona Hill14:41

And I also didn't think that I was going to stay in America for a long period of time. I thought I'd have this master's degree.

Fiona Hill14:47

I'd leave, I'd come back and do something in the United Kingdom, so I should try to see as much of America as I possibly could. So I befriended lots of people with cars, so I could be a passenger and have my face glued to the window. And I also took a lot of train trips and bus trips on Greyhound buses. You know, the passenger, you know, always kind of riding through and looking out the window.

Speaker 415:06

I am the passenger

Speaker 415:09

Now right, alright

Speaker 415:13

I ride through the city backside I see the stars come out of the sky

Speaker 415:20

Yeah, the bright and hollow sky

Speaker 415:24

You know it looks so good tonight

Presenter15:35

The passenger, Iggy Pop.

Presenter15:37

Sophiona Hill, you read Russian and history at St Andrews University and then you got a grant to take Soviet studies at Harvard. You decided to stay in the States where you worked for a think tank called the Brookings Institution and later moved into intelligence. That led to you sitting next to Vladimir Putin at an official dinner. How did that happen?

Fiona Hill15:57

At the time I was actually working for the US government, I was the National Intelligence Officer. I sat next to him and I thought, why am I seated next to him? Is this because they think I'm M, like Judy Dench? I was kind of channelling in all of my other inward fantasies. And then I thought, well, am I the least likely person to stab him with a fork in the thigh? Turned out nothing of the sort. I was told later by the person sitting on the other side of him, who was one of his press people, woman of a similar sort of age, that it was because I was a nondescript woman.

Fiona Hill16:24

Neither too old nor too young, you're not fancied dressed, you've got no cleavage, you're just kind of there. I was like tableware.

Presenter16:32

So to allow him to shine.

Fiona Hill16:33

Exactly. Because he said nobody's going to look at you and think, Who are you? But if a man's sitting next to him, they'll all think, Who's that man? Why is he next to Putin? And people will be distracted and you just you were just there. How cl

Presenter16:45

How closely were you observing him?

Fiona Hill16:46

Uh

Presenter16:46

Yeah.

Fiona Hill16:46

I mean, as I said, I mean, I just reached out my hand. I was slightly would have touched him. So I'd take in the suit, you know, the finely tailored suit, you know, the way that a little vein pulses on the left-hand side of his face, the way that I noticed right away that he was actually, you know, like the rest of us, he really could have done with glasses because he has these giant cards. I mean, I could read them all of his cards about, you know, telling him who was who and what he should say and things like this. And I noticed he didn't eat or drink anything. I watched the watch on his wrist. Very expensive. And I could almost, now this sounds really bizarre, but I could smell that he was freshly laundered. He wasn't wearing cologne, but it was almost like he'd stepped out of some sort of special preparatory bath or something into the moment. He was just all in command of himself, you know, projecting this image. And I thought, wow, look at this. I mean, he's just all of this is staged. Every little element of his is staged. This is a performance. Did you talk to him?

Presenter16:46

Oh, free to seminar.

Fiona Hill17:36

Well, not really, no. He's not much of a conversationalist, and uh he barely gave me a glance. But at the um end of it he stood up and he said All sie best.

Fiona Hill17:46

I said, oh, thank you very much. Same to you, President Putin.

Fiona Hill17:49

Shake my hand.

Presenter17:51

Fiona, during your time at Brookings you researched the war in Chechnya and you you spent time then with Chechen separatists. Some of your colleagues warned you that that could be very dangerous, and they were proved right. What ended up happening?

Fiona Hill18:05

Basically, I was having a conversation with a bunch of Chechens, and one of them was saying to me, you know, you're getting, you know, you're asking too many questions here. You need to be careful.

Fiona Hill18:15

And, you know, another one said to me, look, Fiona, we like you, you're a nice girl, but you should not be going there. And, you know, about five, ten minutes later, you know, I was handed a drink because I just asked if I could have, you know, something to drink, wasn't alcohol or anything. I took the drink and I felt immediately really, very strange. And as I stood up, I passed out. And somebody else who was kind of with the group, not with them, you know, took me, you know, kind of quickly back to my hotel room and I was violently ill. And they called someone from the medical system and they immediately said, you've been poisoned. But it wasn't kind of clear what it was. Oh, or who had done it? Or who had done it. It was a warning. And I, you know, definitely took it.

Fiona Hill18:55

Yeah.

Presenter18:56

Fiona, it's time for your fifth selection today. What have you gone for and why are we going to hear this?

Fiona Hill19:01

Well, I've picked basically a Russian group, Nautilus Pompilius, and the song is Goodbye America, sometimes also known as The Last Letter. This was the anthem of my year abroad studying when I was at St Andrews in Moscow in 1987-88. It charts the trajectory of US-Russian relations from the period of hope in 1988 when I got there to just before the period where we are now, where here we are with a confrontation with Russia. And Nautilus Pompilius, for most Russians, they know this song.

Speaker 419:32

Goodbye and meet.

Speaker 419:37

Standard

Speaker 419:41

Prescient President.

Presenter20:02

Now tell us Pompilius and goodbye, America. Sophia Onhill, in twenty seventeen, you joined the National Security Council as an advisor on Europe and Russia under President Trump. Why did you take the job?

Fiona Hill20:15

It was from people I'd worked with before when I'd been in the intelligence community. And you know, they thought that given all the work that I'd done on Putin, my reputation

Fiona Hill20:26

already then for blunt speaking and for being able to explain things in a kind of an approachable way that I could maybe sit down with Trump and explain to him the perils of Putin. And I thought, well, I should. Again, spirit of public service, try to see what I could do to

Speaker 120:36

Hmm.

Fiona Hill20:40

Push back with others. I mean, this was a kind of a mission with other people to push back against what the Russians had done, make sure they couldn't do it again. And I really was naïve, honestly, about the domestic politics in the US because I thought that everybody would understand the national security implications of this. Not that we would actually be in this crazy period in American politics in where Russia became part of the domestic politics, not as a national security actor or a security threat, but part of the whole fabric of this partisan infighting and of politics itself.

Presenter21:10

Despite your experience and being an authority on your subject, President Trump didn't know who you were. At one stage, he thought you were a secretary. How did that end up happening?

Fiona Hill21:20

Well, that's right. Look, one of the jobs of the senior director for the National Security Council on whatever subject it is is to take notes in high level meetings with the President and the National Security Advisor. I mean, you do get to be the note-taker.

Fiona Hill21:33

And I was, you know, sitting there taking notes for a phone call with Putin and I was listening very carefully to what Putin was saying when I suddenly realized that in fact Trump was looking at me and wanting me to basically edit and rewrite the press statement from the meeting. And I did not react particularly well. I kind of looked up dear in the headlights look, oh my god, he's talking to me because he says to me.

Fiona Hill21:56

Are you listening, darling?

Fiona Hill21:58

Hey, darling, I'm talking to you, kind of thing. And I thought, darling? Oh god, that can only be me.

Presenter22:02

That sounds like an incredibly stressful and unpredictable working environment. How did you cope with that?

Fiona Hill22:09

I was really glad I read Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass because I just felt that that was it. I was at the court of the Red Queen or the Mad Hatters Tea Party every single day. I mean, we couldn't really talk about it outside because we were actually trying to make sure that things did not go off the rails. I mean, I was really kind of shocked, honestly, about how narcissistic he was. I mean, yes, we've all read about it, but to actually experience it, he's no different in public and private. It wasn't about America first. His only ideology was self-idolatry. This was a man who didn't know any history. And it was all just everything was all defined about things that he could define that related to himself. And as a result of that, all the things that he actually could have done that could have been positive.

Fiona Hill22:53

He didn't have the discipline to follow them through, and we were just kind of trying to go around to kind of mitigate the damage.

Presenter22:58

Yeah.

Presenter22:59

Fiona, we've got to make some time for the music. It's your sixth choice today. What's it going to be and why are you taking this to the island with you?

Fiona Hill23:06

So this is Imagine Dragons, a great you know contemporary American band, and the song is on top of the world. And during the time when I was working for the Trump administration, one of my few diversions was to actually go out to concerts or you know kind of go home and listen to music and try to forget about everything.

Fiona Hill23:23

I had a really great friend, Shane Green, who very sadly passed away of cancer on the day of lockdown. He bonded with me and my husband over all kinds of music. And in the middle of kind of all of this craziness of Trump, we all decide to go to a concert way out of town, Imagine Dragons. And of course, I couldn't get out of the White House in time. And they're all waiting for me outside, trying to pick me up. And I'm there in my suit, I didn't get a chance to change. And we kind of drive down to Virginia and we kind of get out in this open concert during the summer. And I'm wearing a suit, carrying my little bag and my badge from the White House. I'm trying to stick in my bag, and everybody's in casual clothes on blankets, listening to Imagine Dragons, but it was one of their best days.

Speaker 424:02

Cause I'm on top of the world, ayy I'm on top of the world

Speaker 424:22

I'm on stop.

Speaker 424:26

I've tried to cut these corners, try to take the easy way I kept them

Presenter24:32

Imagine dragons and on top of the world. Sophia Ona Hill, you left the White House in the summer of 2019 and that November you testified against President Trump during his first impeachment. Now, as a woman, you knew that it mattered not just what you said, but also how you presented yourself when you came to testify. How did you prepare?

Fiona Hill24:53

Well, first of all, I also needed a lawyer and the law firm took on or they had working with them a PR consultant, a woman named Molly Levinson, who was just an expert in all of these kinds of events as well, because I hadn't even thought about the fact that millions of people would be watching this live. But Molly was basically saying, well, we've got to figure out first of all what you're going to wear. And I said, well, why? Why is that the case? She goes, as a woman, you're going to be really scrutinised. And she said, and you're going to end up in the style section of the Washington Post. I said, oh, come on. She was absolutely right. And so she actually, before we even got to going through all of the way that questions were going to be answered, she went with me through my wardrobe to get things that would be appropriate for the event. And they arranged for makeup and hair because she said you can't be distracting. You know, you've got to basically ground yourself. It's going to be really cold in these rooms. You've got to be, you know, appropriate desk so your teeth don't chatter. Press your balls of your feet into the floor so that you can make any unnecessary movements.

Presenter25:51

Because they give us a pool for the judges in their value.

Fiona Hill25:54

Yeah, but all the robes and extra layers of clothing, and she said you could freeze. And in fact, the other witness, David Holmes, who was from the embassy in Kyiv, who was the other witness with me, we did end up in the style section of the Washington Post. People talking about our reassuringly dull clothes, you know, we look the part. And people were not, apart from my accent and my opening testimony, people were very much focused on what I was saying, the answers to all of the questions. And not.

Presenter25:56

Such

Fiona Hill26:22

So much on

Fiona Hill26:23

Oh my god, look at that woman. What does she look like, or what's she wearing?

Presenter26:27

That opening statement, your testimony, your story became part of a historic moment. And unexpectedly, for the first time in your professional life, you were the story. How did you adjust to that level and that type of attention?

Fiona Hill26:43

Well, it wasn't until really the next day because I was just shattered after the whole experience when I went home. I had a friend, you know, kind of who drove around with a with a box of Epsom salt so I could go and have a bath and a chicken dinner. And we'd just recently purchased a dog, you know, it was kind of like a little therapy animal and I kind of petted the dog. And the next morning I got up and I was like, oh my god, there was all these phone calls, there was texts and messages, and I was over the front page of every imaginable newspaper and I just thought, uh-oh, what just happened?

Fiona Hill27:13

Basically, I'd go out into the street, and it was just all my neighbours appear. I got flowers from all of my neighbours, and I thought, what's this, but I just told the truth, and articles being written about the accent and.

Fiona Hill27:22

It wasn't all positive, unfortunately.

Presenter27:23

It wasn't all positive, unfortunately. No, it wasn't. There was a lot of death threats as well. How did you explain it to your daughter? She was twelve, I think.

Fiona Hill27:30

Yeah, I mean there was a there was a uh a couple of times where people called at home and um she heard the messages, Are they gonna come and get us? and I said, No, they're not, they're they're cowards. For a while I taped up uh the letter box because it was, you know, people were getting pipe bombs and packets of powder and things like that.

Fiona Hill27:46

And then, look, I mean, I grew up in the northeast of England, I'm not that easily intimidated. And I just decide, okay, right, I'll just have to just be very vigilant and just ignore all of this, but I'm not going to let these people intimidate me. Because this is how we end up with tyranny, with the destruction of our democracy, because a lot of people are far too scared to stand up and to speak out.

Presenter28:09

It's time for your next disc Fiona, number seven. What are we gonna hear and why?

Fiona Hill28:13

Well, number seven is by another lad from the northeast of England, Sam Fender, and hypersonic missiles.

Fiona Hill28:21

And I came across this by accident actually, because I you know, of course hypersonic missiles have been the kind of the last thing that we were talking about in the um context of arms control with Putin and Trump.

Fiona Hill28:32

And at one point I decided to Google hypersonic missiles just to kind of see if other people were picking up at it. And I get Son Fender's song, Hypersonic Missiles. It takes you straight to North Sea. Exactly. And I'm watching the video and I'm like, oh my god, this is the 1980s. He's channeling my angst of when I was a kid. It's a a really good song.

Presenter28:41

Takes you straight to North Shields.

Speaker 428:52

My suits and paddles that rule my world

Speaker 428:57

Saying it's an high time for hypersonic missiles.

Speaker 429:05

When the bombs are barricading, you see that to lift your life.

Speaker 429:12

Oh this is it, high time for hypersonic missiles.

Presenter29:20

Samfender and hypersonic missiles. Sophiona Hill, as we know now, President Trump was acquitted of the impeachment charges. You are now back at the think tank, the Brookings Institution.

Presenter29:31

How do you look back at your time in the crucible of American politics? And did you learn anything that you didn't already know about yourself?

Fiona Hill29:39

It wasn't a great experience in many sects, and I often had to just really pull myself together and say, Come on, Fiona, get on with it. What would your granddad say? Or what would your grandma say? Or, you know, what would they say back home in Bishop Auckland? Just, you know, get over yourself, get on with this. You know, just keep on going and remember who you are, where you're from, and what you're here to do. That's what I've learned about myself, actually, in a way that I can do things. You know, when I was a little kid, I thought, how did people do all of these things? How could I, as a little kid, you know, sitting there on the stairs of the Encyclopædia Britannica, make something happen? And I've realised that everybody can make something happen, especially if you work with others.

Presenter30:14

Yeah.

Presenter30:15

Your mother's still in the North East. You've you're not long back from visiting her. I wonder how it feels to go back home to Bishop Auckland's?

Fiona Hill30:23

It still felt like home, even though I'm cleaning up my mum's house and my mum's had to move into a care home. There's still the people I went to school with, I know that place still like the back of my hand and I want good things to happen. I want the good things to happen for the UK, you know, at large. This is also a great country, and they always, there should be something for people everywhere.

Presenter30:45

Well, Fiona, you're going to leave the UK behind and Russia and America because I'm about to cast you away to a desert island. That's what's coming next for you. We've already heard that you're a survivor and a pretty good traveller. How do you think you'll get on building a life for yourself out there? Have you got any fears about it?

Fiona Hill30:59

Well, I always think that every day when you kind of get up is a new day and all kinds of things are possible. Well, one more song before.

Presenter31:06

Before we send you there, what's your last piece of music going to be today?

Fiona Hill31:09

Well, this song fits in with this. This was the anthem of my whole college years, and it's the other, Matt Johnson, This Is the Day. And I think it's a very optimistic song, because every day I would get up and say, Well, this is the day. Maybe this is it. This'll be the day that all these kinds of things happen.

Speaker 431:25

You fall back again, Slandy Sun burns into your eyes

Speaker 431:31

You watch a plane flying Across the clear blue sky

Speaker 431:38

This is a pain.

Speaker 431:41

You're the line who showed it to me

Speaker 431:45

They say to me

Speaker 431:48

Bring things all into play

Presenter31:54

The the and this is the day. So, if you own a hell at a time, I'm going to send you away to your desert island. I'll be giving you the books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other of your choice. What would you like?

Fiona Hill32:06

Well, you know, it was a toss up between the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, I could build a raft out of that, or Alice in Wonderland, and I think I'll go with Alice in Wonderland. Ah, why in particular? It's one of those classics of childhood and a fantastic allegory for all kinds of things that we have to deal with in life.

Presenter32:22

You can also have a luxury item, what would you fancy?

Fiona Hill32:25

Well, this is a bit of a strange lecture item, but it's crystallized ginger. I actually have ginger chews that I carry around in my bag because it always reminds me of my grandma.

Fiona Hill32:34

My grandma, Vi, who was the most resourceful person that I ever knew, but she also had one of those voluminous gripping white handbags with things in it. And she used to have mint imperials in a tin and a little bag of crystallised ginger. And I always used to go into her bag to look for something because all kinds of things were in there-raincoats, umbrellas. It was like a kind of Mary Poppins bag, you get lost in it. And I would always sneak some of her crystallized ginger and think, oh, that was strong. And then I kind of then rubbing the little bits of the crystallized sugar around my tongue. And now I'm addicted to it. And I just think I would have to have that on the desert island.

Presenter33:08

Oh, absolutely. An inexhaustible supply is yours. And finally, which track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves?

Fiona Hill33:17

Well, it was really a toss up between Ella Fitzgerald It's Only a Paper Moon because that would give me great memories of my dad or the though this is the day. But I think, you know, as I'd be casting on a desert island and every day could be the day that, you know, somebody might come along or something very interesting would come along, I think it would be the though this is the day.

Presenter33:32

Fiona Hill, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Fiona Hill33:35

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. This has been a real pleasure.

Presenter33:57

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Fiona. We'll leave her to her crystallised ginger and happy memories of her grandma's handbag. We've cast away other governmental advisors, including Dame Louise Casey and Samantha Power. And if you fancy listening to Fiona's fellow Northeasterner Bob Mortimer, he's in our archive too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paul McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the presenter and actor Bradley Walsh. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 134:43

Hello Desert Island Disc listeners. I'm Dr. Michael Mosley and in my podcast Just One Thing, I'm investigating some quick, simple and surprising ways to improve your health and life. From eating some dark chocolate, that was really good. To improve your heart. To playing video games to enhance your brain power. Oh god, dear. I'm a bit slow to aren't I. Or singing your favourite songs.

Speaker 135:09

To bolster your immune system.

Speaker 135:11

So, to benefit your brain and body in ways you might not expect, here's just one thing you can do right now. Subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sound.