Biography

Nina Bawden was born on January 19, 1925 in Ilford, Essex, England, UK. She was a writer, known for The Solitary Child (1958), Family Money (1996) and On the Run (1969). She was married to Austen Kark and Harry Bawden. She died on August 22, 2012 in London, England, UK.

Nina Bawden and her husband Austen Kark, the former head of BBC World Service, were travelling in the train that was involved in the Potter's Bar train crash on 10 May 2002. Nina Bawden suffered extensive injuries but survived; Austen Kark was killed.

When I was fourteen, the war came. My brother and I were evacuated in a school train, labelled like parcels with our names and addresses hung on cards round our necks, to a mining valley in South Wales. We lived there for three years with a number of foster parents, some nice, some nasty, but chiefly, like Mr. Evans in "Carrie's War", a mixture of both. Since billets were scarce, we had to learn to keep on the right side of our hosts, which meant watching them rather more closely and warily than most children need to watch adults. We spent the school holidays with our mother on a Shropshire farm, where we were unreservedly, almost lyrically happy. This beautiful county later became the setting for "The White Horse Gang" (1978).

[commenting on the news that Jarvis, the company that maintained the track at Potter's Bar where her husband died in a train crash, had gone into administration] One had a sense when Jarvis went into administration that right had finally been done. I would have opened champagne, but of course I have no one to share it with.