Nina Bawden

Nina Mary Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP (19 January 1925 – 22 August 2012) was an English novelist and children's writer.

According to the BBC, Bawden was "one of the few modern novelists to write successfully for both adults and children", while P. D. James described her as "among the most perceptive and accomplished novelists writing today". She lived in Ilford 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 the Second World War to Aberdare, Wales, at the age of fourteen. She spent school holidays at a farm in Shropshire with her mother and brothers.

She was educated at Ilford County High School for Girls, and then attended Somerville College, Oxford (BA 1946, MA 1951), where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

From 1946 to 1954 she was married to Harry Bawden. They had two sons, Nicholas (who took his own life in 1981) 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 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.

Bawden died at her home in Islington, London, on 22 August 2012.

Literary career Some of Bawden's 55 books have been dramatised by BBC children's television. Many have been published in translation.

Her novels include On the Run (1964), The Witch's Daughter (1966), The Birds on the Trees (1970), Carrie's War (1973), and The Peppermint Pig (1975). For the latter she won the 1976 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.

Runner up for other awards 1987 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize – Circles of Deceit 1995 Shortlisted for the WH Smith Mind-Boggling Book Award – The Real Plato Jones 1996 Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal – Granny the Pag