York-born bestselling writer Kate Atkinson, renowned for her crime novels featuring former detective Jackson Brodie, often sets her books in Yorkshire – a place she’s passionate about. She reveals her favourite go-to spots.
A place in Yorkshire that makes you smile?
Whitby. All human life is there. Every kind of person and character you can imagine wandering along the pier, Church Street, the 199 Steps. Hallowe’en these days is a true spectacle. To see the steps up to the Abbey crammed with ‘vampires’ climbing up to the Abbey and St Mary’s churchyard is astonishing. Last year, one of the biggest full moons I’ve ever seen rose out of the sea as if on request.
A place in Yorkshire that you love to eat at?
Two quite different places. Firstly, the Magpie (Whitby again). It’s very comforting the way it never changes. The wonderful staff are the same, year in, year out. Even after a devastating fire it came back exactly the same. If you have a formula, stick to it! The other, of course, has to be Bettys Café and Tea Rooms - all of them - York, Harrogate, Ilkley, Northallerton, Harlow Carr, although York will always be closest to my heart. I miss Little Bettys in Stonegate (now closed), I used to go there long before it was Bettys and loved the sloping floors and sense of history. When I was young I was able to see through the window into my dentist’s surgery. Always a relief to be across the road from it and not in it.
A place in Yorkshire that you like to take friends.
York, always. I don’t understand why it doesn’t have UNESCO status yet. If I was taking friends I would probably go for a walk along the walls, take in the Minster (I’ve yet to find a cathedral anywhere in the world that I think is more beautiful.). Then I would take them to the Castle Museum and the Railway Museum and then, obviously, we would finish at Bettys. Quite a long day!
An early memory of Yorkshire?
An early York Festival in the Fifties. I was very young and came out of my parents’ shop in Stonegate in the early evening and saw a woman dressed in eighteenth-century costume selling lavender, like a street hawker of old. It felt for a moment as if the past had come to life. Not difficult for me as our shop was undoubtedly haunted. Its most recent incarnation was as a Kingdom of Sweets now thankfully gone. Still haunted though.
Your cultural go-to in Yorkshire?
I’m no longer sure what cultural means but for me it would be the three great Cistercian abbeys – Fountains, Rievaulx, Jervaulx. The peace and quiet of Jervaulx can feel very spiritual and it’s always heartening to see so many families enjoying Fountains. Having said that, Rievaulx is probably my favourite.
A place for indulgence in Yorkshire?
It must be Bettys again. I know, I know, I’m like a one-woman advert for them. I always try and get a mention of them into a Jackson Brodie book. There’s a new one - Death at the Sign of the Rook - coming out this August. Jackson pops into the Bettys in Ilkely encouraged by ‘The siren-call of a toasted teacake’. If there’s one food I’m allowed in heaven (depending on whether I get in or not, of course) it would be a Bettys vanilla slice.
I’m never happier than when...
Well, see above, but my favourite place is actually the National Railway Museum in York. I love steam trains in way that’s almost visceral. I’ve ridden on the footplate of both the Tornado (thrilling, seventy miles an hour never felt so fast) and the Sir Nigel Gresley. The Mallard is perhaps the most beautiful man-made object on earth, in my opinion. I am in the planning stages of a novel about the early days of the railway. I’m very excited at the prospect of the research.
A Yorkshire view that inspires?
The Terraces at Rievaulx, looking down at the Abbey in the valley below. There’s something about the juxtaposition of eighteenth-century cultivation – a pleasure garden with Temple follies – and the ruins of the Abbey down below that I find quite magical. When I’m eating those vanilla slices in heaven I’ll be strolling leisurely on the great sweep of lawn between the Ionic and Tuscan Temples.
Kate's latest book, Death at the Sign of the Rook features her detective Jackson Brodie. It is out in hardback published by Transworld.
