Atkinson was the son of Leonard William Atkinson, from Cheshire. He married Kathleen O'Neill Longridge in 1900. Their son Fenton Atkinson was born in 1906; he was later a judge in the High Court and then the Court of Appeal.
After his first wife's death in 1947, Atkinson married Florence Morton Henderson in 1948; she was the widow of Colonel Michael Henderson.
In 1924, Atkinson was chosen by Altrincham Unionists to be their parliamentary candidate for the seat they had lost to the Liberals in 1923. He did not have long to wait before the 1924 general election, and he won the seat on a swing of 15%.[2]
At the 1929 general election, he again faced Robert Alstead, the Liberal he had unseated in 1924. The Labour party chose to field a candidate for the first time since 1922, which made Atkinson's job of holding the seat easier, giving him a majority of 18%.[2]
^ abcCraig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN0-900178-06-X.
‘ATKINSON, Hon. Sir Cyril’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2015; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014; online edn, April 2014 accessed 27 July 2015
