The son of the novelist and children's author recalls her dramatic life – and wartime work with Margaret Thatcher
Robert Bawden is a GP. Here, he recalls the dedication of his mother, the novelist and children's writer.
Stories played a major part in my mother's life. She talked in her autobiography of being "hungry for real-life drama to be stored away for future use". As it turned out, her life had more than enough drama in it. During the second world war she was evacuated to Ipswich and then to Wales, which left her with memories to draw upon in her children's writing – in particular Carrie's War.
She started writing for a living after Oxford – first as a journalist, then as a novelist – and she never stopped. In her final years, as she became increasingly frail; her main concern was that she was finding it more and more difficult to write.
She was pregnant with me when she started her first novel, Who Calls the Tune, and it took off from there. I remember her being very disciplined. She would lock herself up in her study for a lot of the day and we'd have to tiptoe past. But then she would come down in the evening dressed in her finery and be completely part of the family.
She was very empathetic with children, particularly as they got older, and that partly explains why her children's books were so successful: she didn't talk down to children, she treated them as young adults.
In the weeks before she died, she brightened enormously when she was asked to contribute a chapter for Virago's 40th anniversary next year. She chose to describe how she grew up in the 1940s and I typed as she went over the many stories she wanted to include. She was on fire-watch with Margaret Thatcher towards the end of the war and recalled asking her why she wanted to go into the Conservatives when they were much more intelligent in the Labour party – Thatcher said it was easier to get on in the Conservatives. She was also keen to mention her brief relationship with Richard Burton (she remembered he had awful boils on his neck).
Nina coped with the tragedies in her life by writing about them. It was difficult at times having parts of our lives, particularly my brother's death, exposed to the world, but I think it helped her make sense of it. In 2002, her husband Austen died in the Potters Bar train crash and she was seriously injured. Earlier this year, she lost my sister. Children pre-deceasing you is never good but to lose two out of three is awful.
She used to say, "Well this is a very poor final act and I really don't want to be here any longer" – but she would say that while holding court in her chair with a glass of champagne in one hand and smoked salmon in the other, and she'd have a smile on her face. She was a great survivor.
Read the Guardian obituary here