Nina Bawden
Nina Bawden
Nina Bawden CBE FRSL JPwas 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...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth19 January 1925
survivor victim angry
I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.
liars people tragedy
All writers are liars. They twist events to suit themselves. They make use of their own tragedies to make a better story... They are terrible people.
writing thieves tools
All writers are thieves; theft is a necessary tool of the trade.
differences interesting feelings
I've never found it made the slightest difference being a woman - though there is a sort of feeling that as you get older you're not so interesting.
husband years people
I met my second husband on a bus. We looked at each other and that was it. We were both married to other people at the time and behaved badly, but we didn't seem to have any choice. We were very happy for nearly 50 years and would still be together if it wasn't for the bloody railways.
safety people bars
If you are going to make companies, corporations, actually responsible for the safety of other people's lives, then if they fail in their duty, the only thing to prevent them failing in their duty is the fear that they would be put behind bars.
girl school college
Margaret Thatcher was in my year, and our first-year college photograph shows us standing side by side in the back row. We were both grammar school girls on state scholarships.
writing may close-friends
A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.
husband shoes track
I dislike the word 'victim.' I dislike being told that I 'lost' my husband - as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like an unwanted pair of old shoes.
running sex teenager
But I don't write about sex for today's teenagers. Or Doc Martens boots either. I'm more interested in exploring how exactly the world is run, which doesn't really change that much from one generation to another.
country hate living-on
I would hate to live in the country, unless I was living on a farm.
writing age life-is
One good reason for writing novels based on your life is that you have something to read in old age when you've forgotten what happened.
almost carriage hour large miles next notice photograph platform side sitting speeding station train
The train we had so confidently boarded had been speeding at almost 100 miles an hour and it had derailed. Someone, I can't remember who, showed me a newspaper photograph of the carriage we had been sitting in tilted on its side on a station platform next to a large notice that said Welcome to Potters Bar.
altered decent hard majority people railways terms wake
The murder of my husband by the railways has altered the way I think about everything. I had always thought that the majority of people were decent and honourable. In the wake of the crash, what made me angry more than anything else was the realisation that this was not true. I still find it very hard to come to terms with.