Author of classic children’s novel Carrie’s War and the Booker shortlisted Circles of Deceit, Nina Bawden has died today aged 87.
Apart from writing over forty novels for adults and children, she campaigned for justice in one of her last books after the 2002 Potter’s Bar railway crash took the life of her second husband Austen Kark.
Interspersed with love letters, Dear Austen tells of ‘the lamentable failure of all governments since 1945 to take proper responsibility for the country’s rail infrastructure’ and it was her attempt to do what she could ‘to put that negligence right’. Read an extract here.
Bawden also read The Spectator on occasion. In January 1986 she wrote into the letters page.
Sir: I am astounded by Peregrine Worsthorne’s suggestion (Diary, 4 January) that I do not read the books I review. I read his ‘dear friend’s’ novel twice to reassure myself that it had enough quality to merit a notice.
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