British author Kate Atkinson has opened up about the inspiration behind her latest novel, her approach to historical fiction and the ethical challenges of writing about events that remain within living memory.
Atkinson, 74, is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the Jackson Brodie crime series, Life After Life, A God in Ruins and the spy novel Transcription. Her new book, Our Noble Selves, is set in London in 1951, as Britain prepares for the Festival of Britain.
The story follows Harry Flynn, a former war correspondent who joins the unconventional team working on the festival. After taking a colleague out one evening, he discovers that she has disappeared.
Atkinson said the idea for the novel grew partly from her longstanding fascination with the Festival of Britain, which opened in the same year she was born.
“I’ve always known about the Festival of Britain because it happened in the year I was born,” she said, adding that she is constantly looking for historical settings that can give her characters “depth and texture”.
She admitted, however, that she often struggles to explain exactly where her ideas come from. Asked the same question by her dental hygienist shortly before the interview, she said she would normally answer with “I don’t know” or jokingly refer to an imaginary “ideas shop”.
For Atkinson, writing is often a process of discovering an idea rather than deliberately constructing one. While researching for Transcription, for example, she encountered documents in the UK National Archives concerning British supporters of Nazi Germany who had been identified by MI5.
“I thought: ‘This is amazing. I’ve got to write about this before anyone else sees this,’” she recalled. “But the rest of the time I’m writing blind.”
The Festival of Britain appealed to her because it represented an optimistic vision of what the future might look like. The exhibitions offered visitors a glimpse of technological and social possibilities at a time when the country was still emerging from the devastation and austerity of the Second World War.
That contrast is central to Our Noble Selves. Atkinson’s characters carry memories of wartime hardship, while the festival around them is bright, colourful and forward-looking.
She said the experience must have been particularly striking for children who had grown up in relatively dark and austere surroundings, with little access to the vivid lighting and spectacle presented at the festival.
Atkinson’s own childhood in York also helped shape her fascination with the past. Growing up surrounded by Roman and Viking history, she developed an early interest in imagining what life might have felt like in earlier periods.
That remains the main attraction of historical fiction for her.
“I’m not interested in the politics – just how it [would have] felt,” she said, explaining that creating a convincing atmosphere is one of the greatest pleasures of writing about the past.
But she also believes historical fiction carries a particular responsibility, especially when the subject is close enough to living memory to involve people whose experiences are still remembered by their families.
Atkinson said she is careful to ensure that while the characters and plot may be fictional, the historical setting is grounded in fact.
“The closer you get to real lives, the more you have to brace yourself and think: ‘No, no, no, be careful here,’” she said.
That concern becomes particularly important when writing about the Second World War, when fictionalising real experiences can risk becoming exploitative.
Atkinson also spoke about one of the novel’s more unusual moments: a dinner party where Mitzi Blinkhorn serves Flynn a seafood platter and a winkle unexpectedly crawls away.
The incident was inspired by a real anecdote involving British television chef Fanny Cradock. Atkinson came across the story in a diary written by someone who had attended one of Cradock’s dinners.
When the guest pointed out that the creature had escaped from the platter, Cradock reportedly responded by asking whether he wanted it cooked.
For Atkinson, the episode captured a particular kind of English eccentricity and became an enjoyable element of the novel.
Despite having just released Our Noble Selves, Atkinson is already working on her next project. She is currently writing another Jackson Brodie novel, although she intends to make it considerably shorter and more focused than some of the earlier books in the series.
At the same time, another story is already developing in her mind: a possible sequel to Our Noble Selves that would follow Veronica, Flynn’s stepdaughter, as she grows older and potentially enters the world of espionage.
Atkinson does not, however, rely heavily on notebooks to preserve her ideas. She said she is “really bad at note-taking” and usually allows ideas to remain in her mind until they gradually take shape.
Sometimes, she simply asks whoever happens to be nearby to remember an idea for her.
“It’s a mishmash whirling around in there,” she said. “I let things bubble away and settle down.”
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