A literary romp: Our Noble Selves, by Kate Atkinson, reviewed
From our UK edition
It is hard to imagine a setting better suited to bureaucratic absurdity than the lead-up to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Conceived of as a tonic for the battered postwar nation, an exercise in rebuilding, hope and celebration, it captured British eccentricity. There was even an ‘Eccentrics’ Corner’, designed to show off the ‘fertile madness of the British character’, which featured among other things the Festival emblem made up of 604 gallstones – all belonging to one patient. When Kate Atkinson tells us at the beginning of Our Noble Selves that ‘the Festival was due to open in a handful of weeks and absolutely nothing looked as if it would be ready’, we can be in no doubt that we’re in for a good time.
