Kate Atkinson is an English novelist, born in York on 20 December 1951, who writes literary and historical fiction alongside the Jackson Brodie detective novels. Her debut, “Behind the Scenes at the Museum”, won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1995, and both “Life After Life” and “A God in Ruins” won the Costa Book Award for Novel.
The daughter of a shopkeeper and an only child, Atkinson studied English literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her master’s degree in 1974. She went on to study for a doctorate on the American short story but failed her thesis defence, and afterwards worked in jobs ranging from care worker to legal secretary and teacher. She began writing short stories in her thirties, winning a Woman’s Own competition in 1986 and the Ian St James Award in 1993.
“Behind the Scenes at the Museum” tells the story of a family during the two world wars through the memories of Ruby Lennox. It took the Whitbread prize for first novel and then the overall award, ahead of Salman Rushdie’s “The Moor’s Last Sigh”. “Human Croquet” (1997), “Emotionally Weird” (2000) and the story collection “Not the End of the World” (2002) followed.
“Case Histories” (2004) introduced the private investigator Jackson Brodie, her first male protagonist. Three more Brodie novels had appeared by 2010, and the BBC adapted them as the series “Case Histories”, filmed in Edinburgh with Jason Isaacs in the lead and first shown in 2011. Brodie returned in “Big Sky” (2019) and “Death at the Sign of the Rook” (2024), a country house mystery that pays homage to Agatha Christie.
In “Life After Life” (2013), Ursula Todd dies several times, only to be born again in 1910 and start her life anew. The BBC dramatised it in 2022 with Thomasin McKenzie as Ursula. “A God in Ruins” (2015) follows Ursula’s brother Teddy, a wartime RAF pilot, and made Atkinson the first author to win a Costa Book Award three times. “Transcription” (2018) concerns a woman who worked for MI5 during the Second World War, and “Shrines of Gaiety” (2022) is set among London’s nightclubs shortly after the First World War.
Atkinson was appointed MBE in 2011 for services to literature and lives in Edinburgh. Her most recent novel, “Our Noble Selves” (2026), is a mystery set behind the scenes of the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Publication Order of Jackson Brodie Books
| Case Histories | 2004 |
| One Good Turn | 2006 |
| When Will There Be Good News? | 2008 |
| Started Early, Took My Dog | 2010 |
| Big Sky | 2019 |
| Death at the Sign of the Rook | 2024 |
Publication Order of Todd Family Books
| Life After Life | 2013 |
| A God in Ruins | 2015 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Behind the Scenes at the Museum | 1995 |
| Human Croquet | 1997 |
| Emotionally Weird | 2000 |
| Transcription | 2018 |
| Shrines of Gaiety | 2022 |
| Our Noble Selves | 2026 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Shine, Pamela! Shine! | 2020 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Not the End of the World | 2002 |
| Festive Spirits | 2019 |
| Normal Rules Don’t Apply | 2023 |