Nina Bawden was born in 1925 in
Ilford,
Essex, England as
Nina Mary Mabey. She lived in Ilford in "a rather nasty housing estate that [her] mother despised". Her mother was a teacher and her father a member of the
Royal Marines. She was
evacuated during the Second World War to
Aberdare, Wales, at the age of fourteen. She spent school holidays at a farm in
Shropshire with her mother and brothers. She was educated at
Ilford County High School for Girls, and then attended
Somerville College, Oxford (BA 1946, MA 1951), where she gained a degree in
Philosophy, Politics and Economics. From 1946 to 1954 she was married to Harry Bawden. They had two sons, Nicholas (who took his own life in 1981) She also had two stepdaughters: Cathy, who lives in
New Zealand, and Teresa, who lives in London. In 2002 Bawden was badly injured in the
Potters Bar rail crash, in which her husband was killed. Her testimony about the crash, and her exploration of the management and maintenance mistakes that caused it, became a major part of
David Hare's play
The Permanent Way, in which she appeared as a character. Bawden died at her home in Islington, London, on 22 August 2012. ==Literary career==