Kate Atkinson

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:46

My castaway this week is Kate Atkinson, an author who thrills fans and critics alike. Her best-selling novels are distinguished by their inventive narrative structures and intricate, masterfully wrought plots. Her career began on a high. Her debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1995. Since then, she's won the Costa Novel Prize twice for Life After Life and A God in Ruins, and her Jackson Brody detective series was adapted for TV. Born and brought up in York, her parents ran a medical and surgical supplies shop. An only child, she was a voracious reader, so much so that her local library gave her an adult card so she could take out more books. She began writing her short stories in her thirties, publishing her first novel in her early 40s. Time, secrets, memory, family and loss are recurring motifs in her work. She describes the writing process as very mysterious. I don't question it anymore. I just think I'll start and we'll get somewhere. Kate Atkinson, welcome to Desert Islanders.

Kate Atkinson1:51

Thank you. Lovely to be here.

Presenter1:53

So tell me a little bit more about that unconscious process at work. Apparently, if we see you starting to clear out your drawers, it means it's happening.

Kate Atkinson1:59

It means

Kate Atkinson2:00

Well, I do find sorting incredibly therapeutic because it's mindless yet it's purposeful. I sound very puritanical, but actually it helps me think. It's just funny you've said that because I'm starting to think about writing a new one and I am aggressively sorting out my drawers at this moment in time. So yes, there's something about

Speaker 12:17

My drawers at this

Kate Atkinson2:22

mindlessness as opposed to mindfulness that I think is very creative. It it allows your brain some space to start doing a lot of unconscious thinking, and then you have very tidy drawers at the end of it.

Presenter2:34

That sounds like a double win. So, what happens after that then, when the story starts to take shape? You've often described writing as quite a physical process.

Kate Atkinson2:42

I d I do feel it's a bit like weaving, and my fingers already are starting to move as if I'm trying to knit something. But I think it's uh

Kate Atkinson2:51

It's obviously not a physical process and yet it's a very structured thing. So I think that's why I always think of it in those physical terms because you're putting something together, you're making something. I don't think writing, that might be for some people, but writing isn't something that just flows out of you in this strange stream of consciousness. It's something that you have to make. It's fabricated. It's for all intents and purposes. It's a work of art.

Presenter3:17

Your work is not autobiographical, but you've also said that everything that's happened to you goes into your writing. Tell me about that.

Kate Atkinson3:23

Uh

Presenter3:23

Well

Kate Atkinson3:24

By necessity, because it comes out of my brain, so I just think it has to. I used to be very insulted in the early well, insulted is maybe the wrong word, but people were always saying to me, Oh, you know, behind the scenes that must be autobiographical. And I was like, No, I am capable of writing fiction. But now I'm more likely to hold up my hand and say, Yes, that's sort of happened to me, or that's happened to people I know, because obviously you're taking it from your own experience, and history, and beliefs, and everything. So, everything about you goes into it, and it comes out in a different form.

Presenter3:55

I love Mary McCarthy's line on that idea, which is I'm putting real plums in an imaginary case.

Presenter4:02

That's a very good description. So, what about music? I mean, how important is that to you, and how was it choosing your eight discs today?

Kate Atkinson4:08

It was relatively easy, but then I could just as well choose another completely different eighth. I realised when I got to the end of my list that it's actually more about cheering me up than anything, because I thought I'm going to be on my own in a desert isle and I don't want to be feeding the melancholy the whole time. So a lot of it's about just being able to put myself in a good place, I think. Well, let's hear your first piece of music, Kate Atkinson. Tell me why you chose Disc 1. I chose Glen Miller because partly it's in my childhood. I was born in 1951 and Glen Miller was still being played a lot. But also, I think from that sense of jauntiness, you hear the first notes of In the Mood and that's it. You just think, you want to be on your feet. You know, you just think, fantastic, I feel great. And I think that's really one of the reasons that I've chosen this. But also, I probably first heard it when.

Kate Atkinson4:58

I watched as a child on a Sunday afternoon the old film about Glen Miller and the Glen Miller story made such an impression because it's it was so packed with emotion and June Allison at the end and Little Brown Chug and it was so sad and I think that had a very powerful effect. Film has great power over people.

Presenter6:15

Glenn Miller and In the Mood. Kate Atkinson, your novels are hugely evocative, immersing readers in the atmosphere of a particular era, post war Britain, in transcription, for example. How do you go about doing that, creating that kind of atmosphere?

Kate Atkinson6:30

Yeah.

Presenter6:30

Well, if

Kate Atkinson6:31

Even from a child I enjoyed thinking about what it would be like to live in past times. And I come from York, which is a very historic town. And my father used to walk me through the streets in the centre of town a lot. We'd go on various errands from the shop. And he would also take me to the Castle Museum, which is a folk museum. It was the first of those living museums. And I think that particularly sparked something in me that somehow history was all around you because it is in York. And I think... Certainly with the wartime books, I definitely did an immersion. I mean, I listened to, I only listened to music from the period, including Lots of Glen Villa, but a lot of that music is terrible, I have to say. But, you know, just watching films from the period, watching documentaries and it wasn't a real immersion. Music is...

Presenter7:16

is one thing and speech is one thing, but but smells and sights and sounds, are they harder to create? I was interested to read that one of your very early memories is the smell of jam from the round tree.

Kate Atkinson7:17

And speech

Kate Atkinson7:26

From Ranty's factory opposite, and chocolate. Yes, the smell of cocoa to me is is very redolent. And also my father used to take me to the pub across the road in Stonegate, the punch bowl. And so I was brought up on the stale smell of beer and cigarettes and it's strangely a smell I really love.

Kate Atkinson7:42

I don't have a strong sense of real smell, but I have a kind of imaginary sense of smell. So I often conjure up smells without realising it. And I'll turn to someone and go, can you smell, you know, a coal-fire? And they'll go, no. I'll go, oh, it's just me then. So I think that helps too, because the past is obviously smells completely different to the present, which I think is always a fascinating idea. You know, in New York there's the Viking Museum and they pump out smells, I don't know, rotting garbage dumps and things that they think, you know, the fish and all the things they imagine the Vikings would have been smelling.

Presenter8:15

Yes, many a school trip there back in the day. It still smells exactly the same, I hear. So you d you don't need notes, but apparently you do need a title. Where do they come from?

Kate Atkinson8:17

It's still

Kate Atkinson8:24

I don't know. I don't know. That's a mystery. Sometimes they're just things that you've read or heard and you think that would make a great title for something. And those are often the ones I forget because I have a terrible memory really. But once you've got a title, it's very hard to get rid of it. And sometimes I have had to look for novels to hang on to a title. But if I have a title.

Kate Atkinson8:45

then that unconscious bit of the brain that does that kind of creative thinking has got something to work on. You know, it's not a blank page, it's an idea.

Presenter8:55

But when you hear a phrase or read a phrase and I mean, Started Early Took My Dog is Emily Dickinson's poetry, for example, do they just leap out at you? Do you instantly know that it's it's that or that pawn?

Kate Atkinson8:59

Consider the

Kate Atkinson9:06

I wanted to write a novel that the title of which was the first line of an Emily Dickinson poem and for a while it was I heard a fly buzz when I died and I thought no people would not want to read this book. So then I thought Started Only Took My Dog. You can formulate your own thinking around it in a way but that's why Jackson Brody got a dog and that's why he developed a very uncharacteristic liking for Emily Dickinson poetry which he'd never discovered before. So in a way he was forced into that title.

Presenter9:36

Well, but it I'm sure it did in the world of likened your ability to hold more than one book in mind at a time to a chicken's ability to lay eggs.

Kate Atkinson9:38

I think

Presenter9:46

I need to know more about this.

Kate Atkinson9:50

It's not a very elegant metaphor, but they kind of back up in the way that a chicken's eggs do. So the one that's closest to me at the moment will be the one I'm going to write because it's formulated itself more. And then far in the background, there's more like ideas for books. So it's five or six eggs away. There's the germ of an idea for a book. And as they move forward, they become more fully formed. And is there always another one coming at the end of the day? Always, yeah, so several.

Presenter10:16

Always, yeah, so

Presenter10:19

Time for some more music. Kay Atkinson, tell me about your second disc today.

Kate Atkinson10:23

Well, I think Kathleen Ferrier was probably one of the first musical voices I ever heard because my father had this record and he was very fond of Kathleen Ferrier and she was a northern girl and I think that particularly made him fond of her. But this one I like, the keel row, because I just like the idea of this great operatic voice singing about the keelmen carrying coal across the tide into the big ships. And I think it was a very unusual thing at the time to be hearing northern voices. You know, you didn't hear them on the BBC. I think Wilfrid Pickles would have been the only northern voice that anyone heard. And yet here's this woman who has very strong northern roots who is singing the most amazing music.

Speaker 411:05

As I came through Sandgate, through Sandgate, through Sandgate, As I came through Sandgate, I heard the Lassie sing. As I came through Sandgate, through Sandgate, through Sandgate, As I came through Sandgate, I heard Dalassie sing. Wheelway, the Geel Row, the Gill Row, the Keel Row.

Speaker 111:06

T

Speaker 111:09

Sorry, you can't.

Speaker 411:23

We owe the kill of the poor lodges in

Speaker 411:27

We'll make the hero, the hero, the hero. We'll make the hero that my love is in.

Presenter11:37

The Keel Rose, sung by Kathleen Ferrier. Kate Atkinson, you were born in York in 1951 to John Atkinson and Myra Keach. Tell me about them, starting with your dad. What was he like?

Kate Atkinson11:49

He was self taught. He was an autodidact and he came from a poor family, mining family. His father was killed in the Bentley Pit explosion and he went down the Bentley Pit to work and then he went

Kate Atkinson12:02

Joined the merchant navy and his mother told him to get out when the war came and he went back down the pit and finally he got out and got a job as an assistant manager in a shop and then from there he moved to another shop. So he was very aspirational. I mean his mother was a cruel woman, she wasn't a nice woman. She stopped him going to grammar school. He got a scholarship and she said he couldn't go. You know he liked to pint, he liked to fag, he liked talking to people. He liked women, not in a salacious way, but you know, he enjoyed the company of women. And my mother, unfortunately, was none of those things. She was really quite asocial. You know, and I think of my father, I think of him in an expansive way. I think of my mother and I think of her in a constrained way. Those are two opposites. So they were a very poor match. But of course it was a shotgun wedding because they had to get married because I was oh, fifteen months old by the time they actually got married. So they weren't married when you were married. No, my mother, and she would never talk about it, got married during the war.

Speaker 112:37

Yeah.

Presenter12:54

Yeah.

Presenter12:56

No, my my

Kate Atkinson13:00

She must have been very young at the time and she took an immediate dislike to him. He was posted abroad, so when he came back, she would have nothing to do with him, but she couldn't get a divorce. I think there had to be a lot more mutual cooperation over divorces in those days. And then finally, he wanted to emigrate to Australia, and he couldn't do it without spousal permission. And so they sort of traded off. She got her divorce, and he went to Australia. I didn't know. I was well into my 30s when I applied for a long birth certificate. I'd only ever had a short one, which is what you get when you're a legitimate report. I didn't know that. And I got this back saying that my mother had this other name, you know, before she married my father. And I was working for a solicitor at the time. And I took it and I said, what does this mean? I don't understand. He said, well, you mean she was married before. So I did this whole detective thing where I went to the register office and I got the marriage certificate and the divorce certificate and all of these things.

Kate Atkinson13:52

And there it is, I was a legition.

Kate Atkinson13:54

I had this great moment with her that if you put in a novel you would never ever believe because I was sitting watching the royal wedding, the first royal wedding, Diane Charles, with my own small child on my lap. And I thought I have to introduce this subject to my mother. This is, you know, this is all about marriage. So I said, you never said that you were married before. And she said, no, I was going to tell you, but you left the room.

Kate Atkinson14:15

So there you have it.

Kate Atkinson14:19

So, but I didn't know I was illegitimate until I was 36. And did that give you a new perspective on what your early life had been like? No, well, I think it did explain some things about my mother, because she was very aware of what people thought. And I think it must have been an incredible strain for her to be pretending to be married to someone and pretending that everything was fine when, in fact, she knew the truth of it. So I can't imagine what that was like. And what about the shop? They ran a medical supply shop.

Presenter14:43

Medical and psychological support.

Kate Atkinson14:48

Electric wheelchairs to camp corsets to Durex to nail clippers. It was an extraordinary range of incredibly embarrassing goods that they carried. So I often used to think, oh, why couldn't they just sell something like perfume or something lovely? But it was an odd, very odd shop, which is long gone now. And it kind of came back to life in behind the scenes in the museum. Behind the scenes at Museum. I do remember right through my teen years thinking in some odd abstract way, I'll make use of this one day. This won't just be an embarrassment that I carry with me. This will be something I can use in a fruitful way. And so, yeah, it was. And what about...

Presenter15:10

Yeah.

Presenter15:24

What about your early life and the things that you did together as a family? Were there days out and holidays and that kind of thing?

Kate Atkinson15:30

We had holidays, seaside holidays, as you did in the fifties, you know, a week in Bridlington and so on. And my father had a van for the business, so the earliest times we'd be going in the van. But we would have Sundays out, so we would go for a drive. But in those days, you just drove. You didn't bother getting out a lot of the time, because it's such a novelty. So we'd have eaten our sandwiches by the time we were out of the drive. And then we were off. Sometimes we got out, we went to Howard House, we went up on the moors. But it was such a traditional thing for people with cars in the 50s to just go for a drive. Time for more music. Tell me about your third disc today.

Kate Atkinson16:06

Well, this is the first record I ever bought. I love the Everly Brothers even now, and until then my parents had bought me records, so I had things like Bimbo and David Crockett, and I'm a pink toothbrush, you're a blue toothbrush. So this was my entry into grown-up music at the age of six. I mean, my parents must have physically bought this for me, and I think there's always been such a risque edge to this song. They probably never listened to the lyrics.

Speaker 416:33

Wake up, being Susie. Very good

Speaker 416:38

Wake up, Lee Susie, wake up!

Speaker 416:43

Both we found a sleep Wake up to this and see and we

Speaker 416:48

The movie's over, it's four o'clock and we're in trouble deep. Wake up, please, Susie.

Speaker 416:55

Wake up with Susie!

Speaker 416:58

What are we gonna take for your mama? What are we gonna take for your papa?

Speaker 417:03

But what we're gonna tell our friends is gonna say

Speaker 417:07

Ooh la la wake up

Presenter17:09

The Everly Brothers, wake up little Susie. Kate Atkinson, take me back to the time then when you were still Catherine. I know you like to keep her to yourself, but I'm going to press you to describe her. What kind of.

Kate Atkinson17:17

Press you to describe.

Kate Atkinson17:20

Girl wave.

Presenter17:20

Uh

Kate Atkinson17:20

Well, I think I was formed by the fact I was an only child and only children, I think, tend to agree with each other about

Kate Atkinson17:28

That state.

Kate Atkinson17:30

Because you long to have brothers and sisters, but when you go into families with siblings, you recoil in horror because they just seem to fight all the time, constantly at each other's throats. My mother was one of six, and my father was one of eight, but a lot of them didn't speak to each other, so I didn't know those cousins so well. But on my mother's side, there were a lot of cousins, and I was the only, only child. So I was spoiled. I was told this regularly, Catherine, you're spoiled. And I was also told I was posh because I went to a private primary school just in an effort to get me through the 11 plus. I think my father, not having been denied an education, realized how important education was. And so he paid for me to go to this bizarre, odd, weird primary school. So I think, in a way, I had that fed back to me a lot. So I used to think, oh, I'm spoiled, am I? How exactly am I spoiled? Because it's to do with stuff, basically. You get your own stuff. You don't have to fight over it. You get more money spent on you. And I just used to resent terribly being told I was spoiled. So you know I'm going to have to ask you to tell us about this.

Presenter18:38

Bizarre, weird, strange school that you just described.

Kate Atkinson18:41

It was in a terraced house on Clifton Green, and it had four classrooms. We'd go down to the lounge, which was the headmistress's. The headmistress lived in this house, so this was also her personal lounge. Every morning we would watch schools broadcasting while Miss Netherwood had a tray brought to her of coffee and biscuits. Then every afternoon we would watch schools broadcasting TV while Miss Netherwood had a tray of tea and biscuits brought to her. And she smoked throughout. So unconventional. To say unconventional. I was taught French, but without the accent. It was designed to get you through the 11. We did nothing but pass papers for the last two years of our school life because it was so important not to be relegated to secondary modern in those days. Extraordinary.

Speaker 119:03

I thought so.

Speaker 119:07

Yeah.

Presenter19:24

And how was life at home? I mean, you said that your parents weren't a perfect match. What was the atmosphere like in the house?

Kate Atkinson19:28

I think the thing about being an only child is you really wish there was someone else there that you could turn to and you could go, really? Is that what they're doing? Is that what they're thinking? Because you're sort of overwhelmed by the adult world. But I was a very self-sufficient child, I think. I read a huge amount. I had a very active imagination. I played schools an enormous amount with Teddy and Lammy and the bad doll Anne. And I was a very fierce headmistress. So I think.

Kate Atkinson19:59

I think imposing order on the world. I think I was.

Speaker 120:01

Imposing

Kate Atkinson20:04

Relatively content in that sense because I'm very good at entertaining myself and I think if I wasn't then it would have been a very difficult childhood. And early access to that adult library card. What were you reading? What were you taking? I don't know. Anything and everything. And I loved Reader's Digest condensed novels. My father had a whole library of them. I thought they were wonderful. In those days, and now you look at children's books and there were just a million amazing children's books. There were very few and they were the classics when I was a child. And so the books you actually owned that you weren't getting out of the library and devouring, the books you owned were precious and they were few. So it was. It was Wind in the Willows and Alice in Wonderland and Enesbutt. And you would, you would read them again and again because nobody told you that you're not supposed to. Didn't you read Alice in Wonderland?

Presenter20:48

Wonderland every week? Oh, pretty much, yes. I think you said that the Alice structure, you know, was inspirational for the first three books, you know, your first trilogy.

Kate Atkinson20:56

Alice's voice, which is the voice of the child who doesn't understand the adult world, who is mystified by adults. I think that was very much in behind the scenes. That was Ruby Lennox's voice, and my voice in a way. It is that child who's going, look at these people, what are they doing? They're all mad. Tell me about your fourth piece of music, Kate Atkinson. Why have you chosen this? My fourth piece of music. It's Peter, Paul and Mary, This Land is Your Land. I started listening to Peter, Paul and Mary when I was about 13 and I was very politicised as a 13-year-old. I was very aware of CND and I had watched The Great War, which the BBC broadcast in 1964. All of that documentary footage I found so horrifying. And I think that kind of set me off in a way. This song was the one that Pete Seeger.

Presenter21:13

Yeah.

Kate Atkinson21:45

And Bruce Springsteen sang at Obama's inauguration, and it was a moment of great hope.

Kate Atkinson21:51

And in this version, which is a live version in Tokyo, Peter Boy and Mary actually substitute the names of Japanese towns, because what they're saying is this is true wherever you live, this land is your land, this land is my land. And this again is a particularly upbeat version. And obviously I'm trying to keep myself very, very cheerful on my island.

Speaker 422:11

My red wood forest into the Gulfstream waters

Speaker 422:17

Land was made for you and me This land is your land

Speaker 422:23

This land is my land.

Speaker 422:27

From Hokkaido to the Kyushu Islands.

Speaker 422:31

From Pujiyama to Septonaika.

Speaker 422:37

This land

Presenter22:41

Peter, Paul and Mary, This Land Is Your Land, recorded live in Japan in nineteen sixty seven. Kate Atkinson, after passing your eleven plus, you went to grammar school and you became Katie then Kate at university. How did that evolution come about?

Kate Atkinson22:54

Well, I I used to think Catherine was quite a long name and it just didn't feel very modern. So I thought Katie yeah, I've been quite influenced by what Katie did at school and all the what Katie books and I thought Katie's a it's a much more um sixties name and I can be a new person because nobody knows because I didn't move up with anyone from my primary school. I was the only person who went from that school to my grammar school. So um

Kate Atkinson23:24

I thought reinventing yourself is quite good. And then I did it again at university because I thought, well, Kate is beginning to sound a bit childish, but Kate, that's a growing up name, so I'll reinvent myself again. And now I've got nowhere to go really. I suppose I could be Kat, but but now I find that I use my own name in my own private life. I use Catherine a lot more.

Kate Atkinson23:47

So you did

Presenter23:47

You didn't get the grades that you needed for Oxbridge, so you took up a place reading English at Dundee. And how was that when you got there?

Kate Atkinson23:55

Well, I got through clearing, so it was not a place I wanted to go. I didn't even know where it was on the map, and it was a culture shock to me, because Dundee is different even from other Scottish cities, but it has its own very particular character. So it took a while for me to understand the spirit of Dundee. It's a woman's town in many ways, because the women were also the ones who worked on the weaving, on the jute.

Kate Atkinson24:19

I think I was just in shock. You had to do the Scottish system, you have to do five subjects in your first, you have three in your second. So I was doing things like economics, which to me was as I had to just copy everyone else's essays because I hadn't the first understanding what economics could possibly be. So it was a shock.

Presenter24:36

Uh

Kate Atkinson24:36

Yeah.

Kate Atkinson24:37

So after your mom

Presenter24:37

Masters, you started a PhD in American literature.

Kate Atkinson24:40

I told you University without it, what happened? I think it was the making of me, I think. I always say my success was predicated on failure because I went to Dundee because I didn't get my grades in history A levels and I became a writer because I couldn't do academic writing anymore and I think that had been a very creative thing for me and so I went through a kind of grieving period after I failed my doctorate and I didn't understand what it was at all. I didn't understand what I was grieving for and then when I started to write, just to write little short pieces, I felt that come back. You know, I felt that I had this outlet for something and that it was actually much more fulfilling than academic writing. You've been offered a doctorate and turned it down. They did that. Dundee offered me an honorary doctorate and I wrote an incredibly polite letter back saying the reasons I couldn't take it because really they owed me my real one and I got nothing back. And so now as a sort of a moral stance I refuse honorary doctorates when they're offered to me and I always have to write the same letter saying the reason for this is

Presenter25:24

Dr. Intended.

Kate Atkinson25:43

And I think it sounds slightly pathetic, but I won't be happy till I die with Doctor on my grave. Kate Atkinson, tell me about your fifth disc today. Why have you chosen Suzanne? Well this is Leonard Cohen. I've chosen Suzanne from the first album. I love Leonard Cohen. I have always loved Leonard Cohen right from the very beginning when he was this brooding, mysterious, dark poet. Much better poet than Dylan, I would say. He's a man who had principles and he was incredibly handsome. You listen to Suzanne now and it still sounds as fresh and as Cohen-like as the very last ones do. So to me I think he's a kind of guru to me. I just think I would, if I could be the kind of artist that Cohen was, then I would be very happy.

Presenter25:52

Well if

Speaker 426:23

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river.

Speaker 426:30

You can hear the boats go by

Kate Atkinson26:33

Uh

Speaker 426:34

Can we spend the night beside her?

Speaker 426:37

And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you wanna be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her

Speaker 426:55

But you have no love to give her, then she gets you

Presenter27:00

Leonard Cohen and Suzanne. So, Kate Atkinson, how and when did the writing begin? With short stories.

Kate Atkinson27:07

But firstly with those autobiographical fragments that you start with, I think because my famously failed doctorate had been on the American short story, I was very aware of the construct of stories. I also was aware that I needed to learn how to write. So I spent a long time just apprenticing myself with sh you know small pieces and

Kate Atkinson27:29

The first story I ever wrote that wasn't about me or my life or wasn't autobiographical, I sent off to a woman's own short story competition in I think 85 or 86 and it won and that was the first thing that I felt was proper fiction and that was probably one of the greatest moments of my life to have someone say back to me, yes you can write and then I started writing for women's magazines just two and a half thousand word stories about mostly romantic. That was my apprenticeship. And was it a good one? I think so because you have to be able to put everything in it. You've got to have character and you've got to have plot and you've got to have beginning, middle and end and you've also, I think, got to put your own voice in it. You have to give it some spirit. I think that's how I learned to write.

Kate Atkinson28:12

Uh

Presenter28:12

You were a single parent of two daughters, and writing obviously is an unpredictable, sometimes quite frustrating profession. To what extent did you feel under pressure?

Kate Atkinson28:20

Well, I had other jobs. I mean, I have a writer's CV. I'd done everything. I was a home help. I was a legal secretary. I taught adult literature. I taught at the university. It never struck me that I ought to be on a career path. I don't know why that thought never entered my head. At the back of my mind, I always knew I was going to be a writer and that I shouldn't be misled by other things and I shouldn't worry that I was bringing my children up in near poverty. I just had this feeling I was going to be successful. At my lowest, when I was earning the least, because you can't earn a living from magazine stories, I got an accountant and he said, what do you do? I said, I'm a writer. And he's like, really?

Kate Atkinson28:58

Yes, that's what I am and that's what I'm going to do and that's what I'm going to be successful at. I think I was forty at the time and I just I thought this is going to happen. It was a very very strong

Kate Atkinson29:11

Push that I had, that I gave myself, that I felt I had to do this.

Presenter29:16

Uh

Kate Atkinson29:16

Uh It did happen very quickly after that. It happened very quickly after I got my accountant. Yes, and I won another short story competition, the Ian St. James Short Story Competition.

Presenter29:17

But how did I clean after I got my account?

Kate Atkinson29:27

I got an agent out of the ceremony and she said, Do you have a novel? And I said, Well, I've got two or three chapters that are more like stories and she said, Oh, show them to me and and she auctioned the thing off and that was it. Within the space of a year I went from really having nothing to having a contract for two books.

Kate Atkinson29:44

Uh

Presenter29:44

You've said that something else happened when you were 40. There was a period when you suffered from agoraphobia.

Kate Atkinson29:50

I did. It descended very quickly on me and was a vast thing for me. But both my parents were phobic. My father got vertigo and then he went blind. He didn't have vertigo anymore. My mother used to make him go up places he would never have gone when he was sighted. And she had claustrophobia quite badly. So I think that's probably where that came from. Was there a trigger?

Kate Atkinson30:14

Well, the only thing I can think of was that I was 40 and I wasn't a successful writer and I think perhaps that had an effect, but I don't know. I made myself go out all the time because that's the worst thing that you never ever ever want to leave the house. And I knew that if I never left the house, I would never leave the house again. So I made myself go out. So, yes, not pleasant, but it was... It was very interesting because I'd never felt myself to be in such a weak and vulnerable position. And I think that's a great learning experience to know what it feels like to be in a state of something that you can almost not fight against, I think. Filed away for future use again. Filed away for future use. Tell me about your sixth disc today. Well, as I said, I feel it necessary to cheer myself up a lot, obviously being on my own on an island. So this is one of my favourite Gilbert and Sullivan works. I love the Mercado, but it's not just that it's madly English eccentric nonsense. It's just also full of these wonderful tunes. So, and I think particularly that the finale for me, I just cannot but feel incredibly elated when I hear the final chorus to the Mikado.

Speaker 431:28

Oh, he's gone, then marry young love. You anger be merry, you rob and be merry. I think you had better succumb, but go and join our expression.

Presenter31:35

Okay.

Presenter31:37

On this subject I pray you be dumb, Your notions, though many, are not worth a penny. The word for your guidance is mum.

Speaker 431:44

I'm not gonna do it.

Presenter31:44

Is this

Speaker 431:45

Very good bargain.

Speaker 131:46

Uh

Speaker 431:46

These all this something is very dumb dumb You think you had better sit down

Speaker 431:51

I don't think you'll win for a penny book.

Speaker 432:08

Bread and cloud has passed away! Then let them for the joy and once with loving sword and merry dance, let them fall a joy and dance with loving song and merry dance, with loving song and merry dance, with loving song.

Presenter32:41

Gilbert and Sullivan's for his gone and married Yum Yum from the final act of the Mikado performed by the Doily Cart Opera Chorus with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Royston Nash. Kay Atkinson, you won the Whitbread Prize in nineteen ninety five for your debut novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum. What do you remember about that time?

Kate Atkinson33:00

Uh

Presenter33:01

I think

Kate Atkinson33:02

I think I, well, actually, I buried my father the day before the whip bread, so I was probably in a rather strange frame of mind. I didn't know anything about the literary world or about writing or anything to do with prizes or the whitbread, and it happened quite soon after it was published, so it had just gone into paperback, I think. So I wasn't, I had no expectations. But I also thought there's five categories, I think it's five categories, and I thought, well, then I have a one in five chance of winning. So why is it so extraordinary that people are going around obviously thinking I haven't got a hope of winning? So I was quite perky about it. I thought, well, I could win, why not? And then, of course.

Kate Atkinson33:40

The headlines were all about Rushdie not winning, rather than about me winning. We did a lot of media afterwards and they were about it being a news item, not about it being a literary item. So there was some very

Kate Atkinson33:54

Strange interviews, um quite nasty. There was a lot of nasty stuff in the papers.

Presenter33:59

Well, the reaction was very revealing, I think, in some ways. So as you say, a lot of focus on the fact that Salman Rushdie hadn't won, but also you were the only sec second woman in a decade to win and a lot of the coverage focused on and described you as a chambermaid.

Kate Atkinson34:01

In s

Kate Atkinson34:14

Well, I'd been asked at some point to write down all the jobs I had and I'd without thinking I'd put chambermaid because when I was a student I was a chambermaid in the holidays and that was picked up on. The fact I was northern, I was a woman. I was like this threat. I was like the barbarian at the gates, you know, trying to get in. I was too far north. Too different. Beyond the wall. It was like, you know, working class woman makes good. I never really understood why it was so nasty, a lot of it. I still don't.

Presenter34:31

It's two different

Kate Atkinson34:41

Yeah.

Presenter34:41

How do you assess that having had even greater success, of course, and the benefit of considerable hindsight? How do you look back at that now?

Kate Atkinson34:47

Well, I think I would have handled it very differently. I wouldn't have given interviews. But then, you know, a lot of it wasn't to do with interviews. A lot of it was to do with comment. I think now I would try to be more sanguine, perhaps. But, you know, you do reach a point where people are not necessarily saying the same nasty things about you because you're a given commodity. Whereas then I was an unknown, I think. Now I'm still unknown because I still don't live in the South. I still don't take part in literary parties. I don't go to things. I don't network. I don't review. So I'm still an outsider. But I think I'd like to think that they're a bit more respectful.

Presenter35:25

Uh

Kate Atkinson35:25

Uh

Presenter35:25

Well, I think you've certainly earned the praise of those who count. Stephen King described your next series of books, which began with Case Histories, as the literary equivalent of a triple axle, such was their complexity. And in the TV adaptation of Case Histories, Jackson Brody is played by Jason Isaacs. I understand that there is a fifth book on the way, but you struggle to get back to your version of the character.

Speaker 435:36

S

Speaker 135:36

Yeah.

Kate Atkinson35:47

Well, his face. Jackson's never had a face. In fact, most of my characters I never describe. I might describe their clothes, but I very rarely describe what they look like. So to me, he has to be this much more amorphous creature. So Jason had to die in my head, as it were, and get rid of his very handsome face so that I could put no face back on Jackson. And it took a few years, actually, to expunge him.

Kate Atkinson36:13

Tell me about your seventh disc today. Why have you chosen this disc? Well, when I'm working, I do listen to a lot of music. I listen to a lot of classical music. I listen to a lot of Mozart and Beethoven and Bach.

Presenter36:15

Uh

Kate Atkinson36:23

And I listen to a lot of country music. I've been listening to country music since about 1980 or maybe earlier than that actually. Because Jackson also loves country music and so he actually really has my playlists when he's talking about music. And this is Miranda Lambert, who I think is a brilliant artist. And I think what I like about country music is that it tells a story. It's not just about divorce and dogs and whatever and guns. It is about human emotions. It's about the heart. It's about feelings. It's one of the few sad songs I've chosen for my island in fact because it does have a real strain of melancholic nostalgia about it and I think it's it represents some of the best of the new writing from women in country these days.

Speaker 137:03

I know they say

Speaker 137:06

You can't go home again.

Speaker 137:11

I just had to come back one last time.

Speaker 137:16

Ma'am I know you don't know me from Adam

Speaker 137:22

These handprints on the front steps are mine.

Speaker 137:27

Up those stairs.

Speaker 137:30

In their little back bedroom

Speaker 137:34

It's where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar.

Presenter37:39

The House That Built Me, sung by Miranda Lambert. So Kate Atkinson, you allowed yourself one sad song there, but otherwise you've been focusing on keeping cheerful. I have, yes, keeping cheerful. Is that a is that something that you have to do?

Kate Atkinson37:46

But otherwise you've been focused

Kate Atkinson37:48

Which I have.

Kate Atkinson37:53

No, I was a fairly miserable child. I think I was, and that again is partly to do with being an only child. I was a.

Kate Atkinson38:02

an introverted child and

Kate Atkinson38:04

I think I

Kate Atkinson38:06

grown into the light as I've got older, so I very rarely get

Kate Atkinson38:11

miserable or pessimistic.

Kate Atkinson38:13

And

Kate Atkinson38:15

I try not to be sad. I think what happens is that as a writer you put an awful lot of your own emotions into writing and in a way it's cathartic. I mean it sounds a bit cliche to say that, but I think it's true, so that you know all of your darkness can be rendered into an objective form as it were. So I think I'm not

Kate Atkinson38:35

I'm not a sad person. And I if you'd asked me when I was, you know, 10, 13, do you think you're going to grow up to be a sad person? I would have said, oh yes, I am. But now I don't I don't feel that. I only just get sad at

Kate Atkinson38:47

Extraneous things, like you know, animals dying or people being, you know, unhappy or bad things happening.

Presenter38:52

Back.

Presenter38:53

So you would but you would have been aware of of your own unhappiness and and thought that that was it when you were thirteen, that that was set.

Kate Atkinson38:58

Set. Yeah. Or or even younger than that maybe, because maybe I think every thirteen-year-old thinks, you know, that they're they're set where they are in their raging unhappiness. But I think maybe as a as a younger child I I thought I was probably looking at a a long future of not feeling particularly in this world, I think.

Kate Atkinson39:18

So you felt quite set apart then as a child? I felt a lot of fear as a child and I don't know where that came from, but that that too has been eradicated, I think. So I don't know. I often think something happened to me when I was very young that nobody would have ever told me about because my family were so good at keeping secrets. So for a long time I thought something bad happened. But now I just think I think bad things happen to everyone all the time.

Presenter39:21

I

Kate Atkinson39:42

I don't think there's any one particular thing. You've described yourself as deeply antisocial.

Presenter39:47

And what lengths do you go to to avoid

Kate Atkinson39:47

At what

Kate Atkinson39:50

I very rarely leave the house actually. In fact, I'm thinking of getting a dog because it would make me leave the house, apart from anything else, apart from being a very wonderful thing to have, obviously. But also, in order to write, you have to be antisocial. You can't, you know, talk to people while you're writing. You can't even move around much while you're writing. It's a very solitary occupation, and I think doing it makes you more solitary. So I don't think it's a very unhealthy thing for the, you know, for your mental health.

Presenter40:16

Time for your final disc today, Kate Atkinson. What is it and why have you chosen it? Well,

Kate Atkinson40:23

Now this This is Beethoven's fifth. I I toyed with the ninth, but I thought if I had to make a choice, would I listen to the fifth of the ninth for the you know the rest of eternity on this desert island? And I thought the fifth, because it's it's so

Kate Atkinson40:41

Ah, it's so resonant with emotion that I don't understand because I'm not a musical person and I don't understand music and I don't understand how music is written, but I know that this is communication at the very deepest and at the highest level and that is the mystery of art.

Presenter41:59

Part of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. five in C minor, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Carlos Kleiber. So Kate Atkinson, how are you feeling about life on the island?

Kate Atkinson42:12

Oh, quite um quite happy actually, because I d I'm very good at being on my own and I think I'm going to enjoy it quite a lot, probably more than I should, um because as long as there's no peril and I'm not going to starve, I don't know how that's going to happen, but you know, as long as I'm safe, I'm going to I'm not going to make any attempt to escape.

Presenter42:29

And as I'm sure you know, I'll give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to read on the island, but you can take another book. What would you like to

Kate Atkinson42:36

Well, I think I would like to take the collected poems of Emily Dickinson and possibly her letters in there as well, just as a sort of compendium. Because I do really, really love Emily Dickinson's poetry, but it is opaque, and I think it would probably take me the entire time I'm on that island to untangle those poems. Okay, so that'll keep you busy, and you can have a look.

Presenter42:56

Tree item two. Can I have an oak tree, please? Well, I have unfurled the scrolls and taken a look.

Kate Atkinson43:03

Yeah.

Presenter43:05

Now, luxuries are meant to be inanimate, but people have been allowed to take seeds in the past. So I think therefore there is a precedent

Kate Atkinson43:12

So I think

Kate Atkinson43:15

for you to take a tree. And I I'd like it to be mature, so about five hundred years old, please. So it's big enough to hug and then it's old enough to be a companion. And hopefully it will attract lots of birds who are so bored with palm trees that they all come thinking, well, this is exciting. I love trees, so I I can't think of anything more wonderful than

Presenter43:16

Yeah.

Speaker 143:31

I love

Kate Atkinson43:34

Having an oak tree. A noble oak tree.

Presenter43:36

These shall be yours. And finally, which of your eight discs would you rush to save if you could only keep one? I think it would have to be the Beethoven.

Presenter43:44

Kate Atkinson, thank you so much for sharing your desert and the pressure.

Kate Atkinson43:46

Thank you for asking.

Presenter43:57

I love the idea of Kate hugging her 500-year-old tree on her island. Among the many novelists in our back catalogue, you'll find Margaret Atwood, Edna O'Brien, Doris Lessing, Isabel Allende, and Catherine Cookson. Kate Atkinson isn't the only novelist to change her name. In 2013, Kirstie cast away Zadie Smith.

Speaker 444:18

I was going to say tell me about the little Zadie Smith, but you were little Sadie Smith. Yeah, I was. Yeah. Oh yeah, you changed it. What what age were you when you changed your name? I was about fourteen. I never really did it by Deepo. I just wrote it everywhere. It's a stupid reason. I just there was a boy I really liked whose name began with the Zed and I I didn't know what I was thinking. I thought that maybe it would help if I never changed my name. Maybe it has. It sounds great. Anyway, tell me then about yourself as a little girl. What were you like?

Speaker 444:45

I was very bookish, obviously it's boring things to say, but it's true. I was quite awkward, I think. I was very self-conscious. I looked pretty funny. I had crazy teeth and I didn't know what to do in my hair and I guess I was kind of a big kid and I kind of made a decision early on that I wasn't gonna get involved in social things. You know, I had to I had a little core of myself. It's like, well, if they don't like me or whatever, I'm just gonna go to my room and read everything. So the carapace was sort of the library, the books and the yeah, and what did you like reading? I guess Roald Dahl.

Speaker 145:14

The books and the

Speaker 445:18

I was obsessive about Narnia and there's a lot of humour in Lewis I think too. And then my mum got me a lot of Jamaican stories like Anancy stories which are quite funny. But pretty early on I started reading, you know, book books. And started writing at five, was that correct? Yeah. When I was about five I wrote a poem about mice and I showed it to my mum and my mum quickly spotted it as a complete piece of plagiarism from Michael Rosen.

Kate Atkinson45:33

Will I

Speaker 445:42

And Michael Rosen gave you a prize. He did give me a prize for that later in life. No, not for that, not for stealing his own poem, but for a little book I wrote with a friend when I was about nine. So I really I suppose I really had the instinct of reading other people's work and reworking it myself. And you do fess up about that quite openly in some of your more recent work. You say, Well, yes, you know, this is a tribute to Ian Forster. I'm very easily influenced. I think I always have been. I need books to kind of keep going. And it's to me it's the best bit of writing is being able to read and enjoy what you read.

Speaker 145:44

You did give me a prize for that later in life. No, not for that.

Speaker 146:01

Yeah.

Speaker 146:04

Bye.

Speaker 446:14

You said once that as a child the thing that you most wanted to be was middle class. You said I liked the big house, I liked the piano, I liked the cats, I liked the cello lessons. What about that now? Uh there's an old Kingsley Ames line that nice things are nicer than nasty things. That's obviously true. But it was a a childish obsession. You always think that the grass is greener next door. And is it? I don't think it is. I I mean my mum and dad provided a lot of what we wanted. We she found an old piano. We had piano lessons we shared with another person. She got all kinds of secondhand violins that we did lessons in our school. They gave you free lessons. I was in Brent Orchestra. So I don't think I missed out on much. The Marvelous Sea

Presenter46:57

Zady Smith. You can hear her Desert Island discs and more than 2,000 others on BBC Sounds. Next week, my guest will be the chef Tom Kerridge. Do join us.

Speaker 447:11

Why is it that some people pretend to support a football team? It's important questions like that I'll be looking to unravel with the help of top experts, psychologists, and some big sporting names in my new podcast, Don't Tell Me the Score. We'll be dissecting sporting themes like tribalism, the power of belief, and the art of resilience to uncover important answers about life and the world around us. Forget the results, tactics, and clichés about two halves. This is a sports podcast the likes of which you've never heard before. Subscribe to Don't Tell Me the Score with me, Simon Mundy, on BBC Sounds.