Meg Elizabeth Atkins

Meg Elizabeth Atkins, about 1980

Meg Elizabeth Atkins (Margaret Elizabeth Atkins, 1932–2013) was a novelist and an active member of the North Western Homosexual Law Reform Committee (NWHLRC).

Meg Atkins was born in Essex and worked as a stable hand before moving to Manchester where she worked as a secretary, flitting between jobs to support her writing. Later she became a full-time writer, living with her husband in Lincolnshire. Her early novel The Gemini (which she later repudiated as an apprentice effort) has a gay theme. Later she specialised in crime fiction, with her series character DCI Sheldon. She is perhaps best known for Palimpsest and Cruel as the Grave.

Although heterosexual, she got involved in the North Western Committee because her best friend was a gay man:

"It seemed to me a total injustice that simply because of your sexual inclinations you should be criminalised."

Around 1966 she conducted a personal campaign around the industrial firms in the Trafford Park estate in Manchester, visiting firms' welfare officers, and asking them to support the campaign for decriminalisation.