Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life, introduces her new novel Our Noble Selves, set as London readies the Festival of Britain, with Samira Ahmed.
Kate Atkinson, author of Life After Life, introduces her new novel Our Noble Selves at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank on Saturday 21 November 2026. Samira Ahmed joins her in conversation in the Purcell Room.
Atkinson was born in York and studied English at the University of Dundee. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1995.
Life After Life and A God in Ruins both won the Costa Novel Award, and Life After Life became a BBC series. Transcription and Shrines of Gaiety, two further historical novels, were both bestsellers.
Our Noble Selves is set in the summer of 1951. Harry Flynn, a war reporter who failed to return to journalism, joins a team readying the Festival of Britain and becomes the last person to see a missing woman alive.
The Southbank Centre grew out of that festival. The Royal Festival Hall next door opened for it in May 1951, the season in which the novel is set.
Ahmed presents Front Row on BBC Radio 4 and Newswatch on BBC One. She is also a trustee of the Centre for Women’s Justice.