Obituary: Nina Bawden

Nina Bawden

1925-2012

Julia Eccleshare writes…

Nina Bawden, who died last month aged 87, was best known for Carrie’s War, but she wrote over forty books all told. She was one of a number of distinguished children’s novelists who wrote equally successfully for adults and children. She made no distinction about the value of the two audiences or the importance she attached to them. On writing for both she said, ‘I consider my books for children as important as my adult work, and in some ways more challenging. The things I write about for adults, I write about for children, too: emotions, motives, the difficulties of being honest with oneself, the difficulties between what people say and what they really mean.’

The result was that all her stories, and her children’s books in particular, had an integrity which struck a chord with her readers. Writing for children, Nina skilfully balanced two things; she maintained a high regard for her readers’ ability to enjoy literary writing – she was a tremendous stylist herself – while also ensuring that the stories she told were readily accessible to her readers by being ‘real’.

Remembering the strength of her own childhood feelings, she thought it was important for children to know that what they felt wasn’t unusual. ‘Children often feel guilty and jealous.’ She once said. ‘Things that they may have done are things that frighten them greatly. I think I was a jealous, guilty child. I think a great many children are and they’re ashamed of these feelings which is why it’s quite sensible and interesting to write about them.’

Drawing on what she remembered from her own childhood, from her observations of then contemporary childhood as seen both as a parent and from her role as a magistrate, she wrote her first children’s book, The Secret Passage in 1963. Very much of its time in terms of the adventure it told, it was different from most because it featured a convincingly modern, not particularly happy family with children who went to the local school. Nina followed it with a couple of other titles before moving into a darker side of childhood in Squib, published in 1971.

For her next novel, Carrie’s War (1973), Nina wrote directly from her own experience of being evacuated. Like many others who lived through that separation from their families she later said that it marked a clear divide in her childhood with the result that she could remember it especially clearly. Carrie, like Nina herself, lived among strangers in a place that was very different from home. She is a wonderfully passionate child who observes and considers before taking action; sometimes she is right, sometimes she is wrong. How she imaginatively rides through the complex adjustments she has to make is touchingly told. Carrie, and even her more fragile brother Nick are not merely survivors, they are children who are changed and enriched by this unusual experience.