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A black background with white brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.
A black background with white brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.

Kate Adie

A black and white, graphic portrait of Kate Adie with a stripe of green in the background. White brush lettering to the left reads ‘Kate Adie’. A black circle by the woman’s head is more brush lettering that reads ‘Rebel Women of Sunderland’.

Kate Adie was born by the sea in Whitley Bay and adopted by a family of pharmacists in Sunderland. She grew up among the clink of cough mixture bottles and the soft pop of chalky pills in foil packets.

She went to Newcastle University and spent afternoons studying in Leazes Park, until she got her first job in journalism, researching local news for BBC Radio Durham.

Kate headed South and switched to the glitz and glamour of national television. She wanted to be at the centre of everything and travelled across the country to march in the swell of protests and to dance at street parties.

In 1980, when the London Iranian Embassy came under siege, Kate sat in a car below the embassy for 6 days, as gunshots rattled the terraces. When the SAS team entered the building through the upstairs windows, it erupted into orange flames and dark walls of smoke choked the street. Kate made a live BBC broadcast crouched behind her car door, interrupting the quiet of the World Snooker Championship. She was calm and composed before one of the largest live news audiences ever recorded and became a household name.

Kate has reported from conflict zones around the world. Her eyes stung in the aftermath of car bombs in Northern Ireland, and she was covered in the blood of strangers in Tiananmen Square. She walked across the wreckage of the Lockerbie Bombing and slept in a camouflage tent in the middle of the Gulf War.

In the time of the internet and fake news, Kate warns the world that journalism is under threat. She says that we have to fight for the right to speak and push back against censorship, in order to hold the world in a fair light.