[2] Atkinson was a curator at the Museum of London and prepared their Suffragette exhibition in 1992.
[3][4] Atkinson's book Love and Dirt about the marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick received reviews[5][6] and Atkinson contributed to[citation needed] Upstairs Downstairs Love, a Channel Four drama documentary based upon it that was screened on 16 June 2008.
[7] She narrated the stage presentation Elsie and Mairi Go To War at the 2010 Edinburgh Festival.
[8][better source needed] Atkinson also wrote about The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton, for Random House (2012).
The legal case that George Norton brought against his free-thinking wife Caroline Sheridan for criminal conversation – adultery, that is – in 1836 was a scandal of the Georgian era, that drew in Lord Melbourne and other leading figures.