Bawden, Nina

(British, 1925– )

Nina Bawden is a highly successful writer of both children's and adult fiction. She has stated that children are ‘a kind of subject race; always at the mercy of the adults who mostly run their lives for them’, and she is also an acute observer of the tension between wishes and fulfilment. A good example of this is Carrie's War (1973). Carrie and her brother Nick are evacuated to Wales where they are bullied by their landlord, Councillor Evans, and make their escape into the rather dream-like world of the characters who live nearby at Druid's Bottom. In her adult novel Circles of Deceit (1987), shortlisted for the Booker Prize, her narrator, an unnamed artist who makes a living out of copying Old Masters, describes his misleading relations with his two wives, his aunt Maud, and his mother Maisie; each of whom has varying versions of the truth.

Jane Gardam, Penelope Lively, Peter Dickinson  IP