Some of Bawden's 55 books have been dramatised by BBC Children's television. Her testimony about the crash, and her exploration of the management and maintenance mistakes that caused it, became a major part of David Hare's play The Permanent Way, in which she appeared as a character.īawden died at her home in north London on 22 August 2012. In 2002 Bawden was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, in which her husband Austen Kark was killed.

She also had two stepdaughters: Cathy, who lives in New Zealand, and Teresa, who lives in London. They had a daughter, Perdita, who died in March 2012. In 1954 she married Austen Kark, a reporter who eventually became managing director of the BBC World Service. They had two sons, Nicholas (who took his own life in 1981) and Robert.

1951), Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.įrom 1946 to 1954 Bawden was married to Harry Bawden. She attended Ilford County High School for Girls Somerville College (B.A. She spent school holidays at a farm in Shropshire with her mother and brothers. She was evacuated during World War II to Aberdare, Wales, at the age of fourteen. Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. She lived in Ilford in 'a rather nasty housing estate that mother despised'. Nina Bawden was born in 1925 in Ilford, Essex, England as Nina Mary Mabey. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award. She is one of very few who have both served as a Booker judge and made a Booker shortlist as an author. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. Nina Mary Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) was an English novelist and children's writer.

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden