Famous People Connected with Durham

For a small city, Durham has an outsized cast of famous names in its story, from the medieval saints who gave it its cathedral to a future prime minister and a comedy legend who, remarkably, went to the same city school. Here is our guide to some of the famous people connected with Durham.

St Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede

Durham exists because of St Cuthbert. When monks fleeing Viking raids finally settled his remains on the rocky peninsula in 995, they founded the church that became Durham Cathedral, and Cuthbert's shrine still lies behind the high altar. At the other end of the cathedral rests the Venerable Bede, the great early-medieval scholar and historian whose writings shaped our understanding of Anglo-Saxon England. Between them, these two figures made Durham a place of pilgrimage.

Best for: Best known as the saints whose shrines made Durham a pilgrimage city.

Tony Blair

The future prime minister grew up in Durham. Tony Blair moved to the city aged five when his father, Leo, took a lecturing post at Durham University, and he attended the Chorister School, in the shadow of the cathedral, from 1961 to 1966 before being sent to boarding school in Edinburgh. He later returned to the region as Member of Parliament for nearby Sedgefield, the County Durham seat he held throughout his years in Downing Street.

Best for: Best remembered as the prime minister who spent his boyhood in Durham.

Rowan Atkinson

By a curious coincidence, the comedian Rowan Atkinson, of Blackadder, Mr Bean and Johnny English fame, was a pupil at the same Chorister School as Tony Blair. Born in Consett in County Durham in 1955, Atkinson was educated in the city before going on to St Bees School and then Newcastle University. Two of Britain's most recognisable public figures, from very different worlds, shared the same small Durham schoolroom.

Best for: Best known as the comedy star who shared a school with a future PM.

A city of scholars

Durham's university, one of England's oldest, has drawn scholars and public figures to the city for nearly two centuries, and the Chorister School's long list of notable alumni runs well beyond Blair and Atkinson, taking in judges, poets, musicians and businesspeople. The writer Bill Bryson, a great champion of the city who once called it his favourite in England, served as Chancellor of Durham University in the 2000s.

Durham's living legacy

What links these names is the city itself: a place small enough that a cathedral, a university and a single school could shape so many lives. You can walk the same streets, visit the cathedral where the saints rest, and pass the Chorister School on Palace Green, all within a few minutes. It is a reminder that Durham's story is made of people as much as stone.

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