Kate Atkinson: Our Noble Selves

It’s the summer of 1951 and everyone is looking to put the dark days of the war behind them. The government’s solution: The Festival of Britain, a celebration of the country’s creativity, grit and ingenuity.

For foreign-correspondent-turned-war-reporter Harry Flynn, it might offer the chance of redemption after a bad war in the Far East and a peace that is proving no easier to negotiate.

Having failed to resume his journalistic career, he reluctantly joins an oddball team of misfits, ne’er-do-wells and downright chancers helping to ready the Festival of Britain for launch.

Flynn’s attempts to resume some semblance of a romantic life also founder when one of his dates goes missing and he is deemed to be the last person to have seen her alive. Could he have been in some way responsible for her disappearance?

Little does he realize that the answer to some of his mounting problems may lie in the hands of a precocious, straight-talking 13-year-old called Veronica and a rather scruffy terrier who goes by the name of Mrs Betty…

Brilliantly plotted, witty and compelling, Our Noble Selves reaffirms Kate Atkinson’s place as one of the world’s foremost novelists.

There could be no more appropriate place to hear from Atkinson about this particular novel than the Southbank Centre, which itself has its origins in the Festival of Britain.

Kate Atkinson won the Whitbread (now Costa) Book of the Year Award with her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Life After Life, now an acclaimed BBC TV series, won several prizes including the Costa Novel Award, as did A God in Ruins. Two further historical novels – Transcription and Shrines of Gaiety – were also Sunday Times bestsellers.