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
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.
county good high maths passed queen second south war
At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.
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.
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.
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.
writing may close-friends
A writer's work may be a coded autobiography, but only a very close friend could decipher it.
running children writing
The kind of response I hope for when I write my novels for children: to give them a chance to recognize something of their own feelings -- about themselves, their parents, their friends -- and their own situation as a kind of subject race, always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them.
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.
mother made-up-stories serial-killer
I grew up on a suburban street with lace curtains and dull neighbours, so I made up stories to tell my friend, in which they became serial killers and burglars. She told her mother, who then told mine.
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 children thinking
There are many times when I think I would have rather died with my husband. It would have been pleasanter, simpler. But it would have been worse for the children and the family in general.
children taken mean
Ten thousand pounds is the legal value of a negligently taken life, of a child or a parent. A cold and somewhat mean-spirited calculation: you would do better if you slipped on a paving-stone and broke a front tooth.