Nina Bawden CBE (born 19 January 1925,^[1] Ilford) is a British novelist and children's writer.

Personal life[link]

Bawden grew up in Ilford in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised".^[2] Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the Royal Marines. After World War II broke out, she was evacuated at the age of fourteen to Aberdare, Wales. She spent school holidays at a farm in Shropshire along with her mother and her brothers.

She attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she gained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Bawden married Austen Kark, a managing director of the BBC World Service, in 1954. In 2002 Bawden was badly injured in the Potters Bar rail crash, in which Kark was killed. She currently lives in London and Nauplion, Greece.

Literary career[link]

Bawden's novels include Carrie's War, The Peppermint Pig, and The Witch's Daughter. A number of her works have been dramatised by BBC Children's television, and many have been translated into various languages.

In 2010 Bawden was nominated for the Lost Man Booker Prize for her novel The Birds on the Trees. She and Shirley Hazzard were the only living nominees out of the six shortlisted; the award went to J.G. Farrell for his novel Troubles.

Bibliography[link]

Bawden has written 55 books in total.

• Who Calls the Tune? (1953)
• The Old Flamingo (1954)
• Change Here for Babylon (1955)
• The Solitary Child (1956)
• Devil by the Sea (1958)
• Just Like a Lady (1960)
• In Honour Bound (1961)
• The Secret Passage (1963)
• Tortoise by Candlelight (1963)
• The House of Secrets (1963)
• On the Run (1964) – US title: Three on the Run
• Under the Skin (1964)
• A Little Love, A Little Learning (1965)
• The White Horse Gang (1966)
• The Witch's Daughter (1966)
• A Handful of Thieves (1967)
• A Woman of My Age (1967)
• The Grain of Truth (1969)
• The Runaway Summer (1969)
• The Birds on the Trees (1970)
• Squib (1971)
• Anna Apparent (1972)
• Carrie's War (1973)
• George Beneath a Paper Moon (1974)
• The Peppermint Pig (1975)
• Afternoon of a Good Woman (1976)
• Solitary Child (1976)
• Rebel on a Rock (1978)
• Familiar Passions (1979)
• The Robbers (1979)
• Walking Naked (1981)
• William Tell (1981)
• Kept in the Dark (1982)
• The Ice House (1983)
• Saint Francis of Assisi (1983)
• The Finding (1985)
• On the Edge (1985)
• Princess Alice (1986)
• Circles of Deceit (1987)
• Henry (1988)
• Keeping Henry (1988)
• The Outside Child (1989)
• Family Money (1991)
• Humbug (1992)
• The Real Plato Jones (1993)
• In My Own Time: Almost an Autobiography (1994)
• Granny the Pag (1995)
• A Nice Change (1997)
• Off the Road (1998)
• The Ruffian on the Stair (2001)
• Dear Austen (2005)

Prizes and awards[link]

• 1976 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize – The Peppermint Pig
• 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
• 1993 Phoenix Award – Carrie's War
• 2010 Shortlisted for The Lost Man Booker Prize – The Birds on the Trees

External links[link]

• Biography

References[link]

Notes[link]

• Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2002 by Jonathan Petre. "Novelist is injured and husband killed at Potters Bar"
• Daily Telegraph, 27 December 2002, by Richard Alleyne. "Potters Bar widow calls for death charges"
• Mann, Jessica (10 April 2005). "Sorry seems to be the hardest word". Daily Telegraph. UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/04/10/bobaw10.xml. Retrieved 12 April 2010.