Kathleen Nott

Kathleen Cecilia Nott was a British poet, novelist, critic, philosopher, and editor. Born in Camberwell, London, she was educated at Mary Datchelor Girls' School and King's College, London, before attending Somerville College, Oxford, on an exhibition scholarship. Initially studying English Literature, she switched to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE), graduating in 1929. During the 1930s, Nott worked as a social worker and psychologist in the East End of London, an experience that informed her first novel, *Mile End* (1938). Her marriage to Christopher Bailey took them to the Netherlands, from where they fled in 1940. After the war, they moved to Sweden, and their marriage was dissolved in the 1950s. Nott gained wider recognition for *The Emperor's Clothes* (1953), an atheist critique of religious literary figures like T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis. She became a regular contributor of book reviews to *The Observer* and wrote extensively for humanist and rationalist publications. Nott was a committed humanist and rationalist, advocating for the extraction of human values from religion. She served as President of the Progressive League and an honorary associate of the Rationalist Press Association. In her later years, she suffered from deafness and Parkinson's disease, and died in Swindon, Wiltshire.