Anne Atkins

The author of four novels – The Lost Child, On Our Own, A Fine and Private Place, and An Elegant Solution – as well as three books of non-fiction, she is a frequent contributor to the Today programme's Thought for the Day feature.

She played the Princess of France to Hugh Laurie's King of Navarre and Stephen Fry's Don Adriano de Armado in a student production of Love's Labour's Lost at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge.

On 17 March 2020, Atkins drew much comment on her Thought for the Day contribution in which she said that, after showing her father her script and kissing him goodbye, she left home to deliver her broadcast to hear on arrival that he had died minutes later.

In 1996 Atkins used her slot on Radio 4's Thought for the Day to attack Anglican bishops for supporting a celebration in Southwark Cathedral marking 20 years of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

[25] In 1998 the Press Complaints Commission ruled that an article written by her in The Sun objecting to Government proposals to make the age of consent for homosexuals equal to that for heterosexuals broke the industry's Code of Conduct.

[26] In November 2007, she defended a motion for free speech on BBC2's Newsnight, when the Oxford Union invited far-right figures David Irving and Nick Griffin to speak, saying: "When you say that the majority view is always right I think that is a deeply dangerous and disturbing thing to say.

In a Thought for the Day broadcast about compensation culture, she said: "No more chestnut trees lining the streets of Norwich, in case the conkers fall on your head – as if that would make a difference, in Norfolk.

"[28] In October 2012, Atkins drew both condemnation and admiration for a Daily Mail article published under the headline, "I haven't handed over a sex offender to the police – because I was told in confidence".