Nina Bawden
| Nina Bawden | |
|---|---|
Bawden in 2003
|
|
| Born |
19 January 1925 Ilford, Essex, England |
| Died | 22 August 2012 (aged 87) London, England |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1953–2004 |
| Genre | Novels, Children's literature |
| Notable works | |
| Notable awards |
Guardian Prize 1976 Phoenix Award 1993 |
| Spouse |
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Nina Bawden CBE FRSL JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) was an English novelist and children's writer. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She is one of a select group to have both served as a Booker judge and made the shortlist as an author.
Bawden was born in 1925 and raised in Ilford, Essex, in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised". Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. She was evacuated during World War II to Aberdare, Wales, at age fourteen. She spent school holidays at a farm in Shropshire with her mother and her brothers.
She attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
From 1946 to 1954 Bawden was married to Harry Bawden. They had two sons, Nicholas (who died by suicide in 1981) and Robert. In 1954 she married Austen Kark, a reporter who eventually rose to managing director of the BBC World Service. They had a daughter, Perdita, who died in March 2012. She also had two stepdaughters; Cathy, who lives in New Zealand, and Teresa, who lives in London.
In 2002 Bawden was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, in which her husband Austen Kark was killed. 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.
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