The true strength of the North is its people - passionate, generous and pioneering. Stephen Rouse discovers our modern-day Northern heroes are often echoes of those who built the region's reputation. ********** The entrepreneurs Graham Wylie/Samuel Smith and William Titterington
 The gift of entrepreneurship is often the gift to see a trend before anyone else. In 1907, Smith and Titterington started trading as Newcastle tea merchants with a working capital of just £250. His idea - house-to-house deliveries by horse-drawn van - laid the foundation for the Ringtons tea empire (the name taken from Titterington's surname) - now just two years away from its centenary. In 1981, at a time when most people's experience of computers was limited to Pac-man machines, Newcastle University student Graham Wylie co-founded a company based on accountancy software he'd written. The company was called Sage. In 2000, by which time most of us had woken up to the computer's potential, Wylie was a paper billionaire. Three years later he amazed the business world by leaving Sage and promptly starting another IT company, TSG, now with a turnover of almost £35m. Wylie has built his businesses on very different technology to Smith, but they shared an ability to think ahead of their time - and create hundreds of North jobs into the bargain. The pioneers Kate Adie and Eliza Kent
 "To retire with the man of my choice, far from the gay, the giddy and the vain," may not sound like much of an ambition for a young woman. But given the limited choices she faced in the late 18th century, Newcastle-born Eliza Kent, traveller and writer, was something of a pioneer. Eliza ended up presiding over the house of her uncle-in-law, John Hunter, second governor of New South Wales, and helping him tame what was still a wild convict society. Sunderland's Kate Adie, former BBC chief news correspondent has been equally undaunted in the face of savagery. The bombing of Tripoli, the horrors of Bosnia and Dunblane, all reported with remarkable authority and compassion. Kate, 59, a Newcastle University graduate, is now heroine to a generation of female journalists, possibly unaware of the battles of her earlier career, against gender prejudice as she made her way in the BBC. Eliza Kent worried that she was a woman born "destitute of fortune, beauty and sense". Kate Adie's school taught her to expect "cooking course, marriage and 2.4 children". They are 200 years apart - but had to face the same struggles. The musicians Charles Avison and the Futureheads Charles Avison - the Newcastle composer hailed among the best in Britain - was an unlikely trouble-maker. He was organist at St Nicholas's in Newcastle, harpsichord instructor to young ladies and composer of some of the most sublime devotional music of the 18th Century. But it was his Essay of Musical Expression that caused all the fuss. Avison was roundly condemned for daring to question the then genius of the English musical establishment - a German by the name of Handel. But for all the criticism, Avison's essay is now regarded as a ground-breaking work in English musical criticism. And he could compose too, as his concertos released on CD after decades of neglect demonstrate. Today, the musical establishment believes you need to sing in an American accent to get along. Unless, that is, you are Ross Millard, Barry and David Hyde and Jass - The Futureheads. Sunderland's indie band has had chart and festival success, and the support of the late John Peel - all in unapologetically Wearside accents. Barry Hyde said last year: "We believe regionalism is important in music and you don't hear many people singing in a Mackem accent." Having just conquered America, and numbering among their fans actors Danny De Vito and Elijah Wood, The Futureheads are poised to continue Avison's legacy - that the conventional wisdom is there to be defied. | 
100 Great Reasons...
Brian Aitken, Editor, The Journal
