From The Times August 8, 2008

An interview with Kate Atkinson
"I have a huge amount of hatred, which is a very healthy thing to feel."

Kate Atkinson (photo by Tim Teeman) is unapologetically tricky. She is still aggrieved that the papers tried to unearth her two former husbands after she won the Whitbread Prize in 1996 for the novel she is still best known for, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. She doesn't understand why I want to write about her, decries the media, then admits to being a curious, gossipy person herself - and one with a subscription to Heat. And so we sit in a posh hotel eating frankly disgusting cakes, Atkinson determined not to reveal “my deepest, darkest secrets” and me, on a delirious sugar high, trying to get her to do precisely that.
One should probably tread carefully. Of the tabloid attention she got after winning the Whitbread, she says: “It made me want to kill. In fact several people are now dead. I have a huge amount of hatred, which is a very healthy thing to feel.”
Read the full story in The Times online.
Footnote:
Kate Atkinson is of course one of the stars appearing at The Press Christchurch Writers Festival, 4-7 September.