Welcome to the Restless Politics Leading and today we are going to be interviewing Fiona

Hill.

Fiona Hill is a phenomenon in the United States and should be much better known in Britain

because she is the leading Russian expert, she's been critical to different administrations

including quite controversially to the Trump administration but also played a big part

in her testimony to exposing the horrors of the Trump administration and one of the reasons

she's interesting is that she's absolutely British and has a very, very interesting

British backstory, Alistair.

Well, she's British but she's an American citizen, I guess partly through, she lives there

now, she'd married, raising a family there and as you say as advice, excessive presidents

and we interviewed her, she was in the States, I was in Switzerland, you were in Jordan

but Fiona and I were driving down through France listening to her book and a lot of it is

about class actually, it's about how she grew up in a very, very poor family, her dad was a

minor who became a hospital porter, her mother worked in the National Health Service and the

title of the book is there's nothing for you here which is sort of something her dad said to

about you know you're going to have to go and make your life somewhere else, she went to university,

studied Russian, St Andrews University, became a policy advisor's work for all sorts of different

institutes and institutions and as you say became a critical figure in terms of American foreign

policy. So really, really nice to talk to her and here it is is our leading interview with Fiona.

So welcome to another episode of leading with me, Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart

and we're delighted to have Fiona Hill. Fiona's story is really is quite incredible, I've just driven

through France on Route Switzerland listening to her book, there's nothing for you here at double speed

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