Maxine Mawhinney

Now a leading presenter with BBC News 24, Maxine trained as a newspaper journalist in her native Northern Ireland, before working on radio and television for BBC Northern Ireland in Belfast. Since then she has worked for Ulster Television, ITN in London and Sky News, for whom she was their Ireland Correspondent. She was the Washington Correspondent for GMTV between 1992 and 1996, after which she returned to London and the BBC, initially with BBC World, then with BBC News 24. Maxine is married and has two daughters.

It is the place of the smells, noises and emotions of my childhood. I lived in the east - under the shadows of Samson and Goliath, the giant cranes at Harland & Wolff, the legend of Titanic and the gaze of Stormont.

My grandfather had a vintage car and we would go driving on a Sunday afternoon. We would arrive in grand style at the gates of Stormont, he in his driving hat and me in my best frock. Then there was the walk up the ‘Royal Mile’, the sweeping driveway to the front steps. It was probably the first measurement I ever truly understood after walking it a few times on very young legs.

Belfast for me is familiar and comfortable and yet never fails to surprise and excite. There is an energy and enthusiasm rarely matched anywhere else I have been in the world. “No problem” is the most used phrase you will hear – nothing is ever any trouble.

I have to confess I don’t like Guinness (apart from the creamy head which I steal from my friends’ pints) and I don’t like whiskey (so all my Irish coffees have to be brandy coffees). But, I absolutely love potato bread (especially if it is potato-apple where pureed apples have been put in the middle), and wheaten bread, and soda bread……. I usually leave on an early evening flight, the sun setting as the plane swoops over the city of my birth. I know I will be back.