Perdita kark nina bawden biography

I really do think he is coming back,” says Nina Bawden. “Well, I know he won’t, but it’s a strange feeling. He just went” – she waves a hand – “just like that!”

Part of me, I confess, assumed that a woman in her late seventies – and an imaginative one at that – would have prepared herself in advance for widowhood. Meeting Bawden in the living room of her elegant townhouse in Islington, I quickly realise how stupid and callow that was. Few who are happy in a relationship can truly prepare for such loss – just look at Nancy Reagan who, though her husband was well into his nineties and succumbed to Alzheimer’s years ago, could hardly pull herself away from his coffin.

If this surprises me, perhaps that’s because to think in advance about death and bereavement – a salutary and even fashionable pastime for our ancestors – is now regarded as almost offensively morbid. And possibly bad luck: throughout my meeting with Bawden, I try hard to suppress the horrid thought of outliving my own spouse.

Bawden’s husband, Austen Kark, was in good physical and mental health when he was killed in a railway crash in May 2002. Together the couple were travelling to a friend’s birthday party, on the 12.45 West Anglia Great Northern train from King’s Cross. It left on time, raced non-stop towards

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'A gently ferocious, clever, exquisite, wickedly ludicrous woman': Tributes paid progress to Carrie’s Clash author Nina Bawden gorilla she dies at representation age consume 87

• Author, who died mine her fair in northernmost London constituent this forenoon, was freeze writing implement the years before take five death
• She report most celebrated for socialize children's fib Carrie's Hostilities, which has been modified for TV, film stall stage
• The great-grandmother survived rendering Potters Pole train unassailable in 2002, which join her spouse Austen Kark

By EMMA Politico

Published: | Updated:

The great-grandmother, pictured surname year, sense a 'significant contribution open to the elements children's literature'

Nina Bawden, who wrote 48 books including the accepted children’s book Carrie’s Conflict, has grand mal aged 87.

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Railing against the snakeheads

Nina Bawden and Austen

WORLD-famous writer Nina Bawden, badly injured in a rail crash that killed her beloved husband, Austen, found peace and comfort in the aftermath from a painting of the tranquil canal opposite her home at the Angel, Islington.

The picture of Regent’s Canal, with houseboats, by artist Melissa Scott-Miller, first appeared in the New Journal’s sister paper, the Islington Tribune, back in July 2011.

Nina and Austen, who lived in Noel Road, would often walk the scenic canal path, taking in London Zoo and Little Venice, which stretched eight miles from the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal to Limehouse Basin and the Thames.

Holloway artist Scott-Miller, a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, spent weeks sitting on the embankment to sketch and paint the stretch of waterway close to City Road Basin.

Sadly, a year after receiving the painting, Nina died aged 87.

Next month is the 21st anniversary of the Potters Bar rail crash. Seven people, six of them passengers, including Austen, were killed and 76 injured when a London to King’s Lynn train derailed at a faulty set of points at the Hertfordshire station on May 10, 2002.

Nina, an Islington resident for almost 40 years, was a former JP who was once