Books by Nina Bawden

Carrie’s War

Granny the Pag

Keeping Henry

The Finding

The Outside Child

The Peppermint Pig

The Runaway Summer

The Secret Passage

The Witch’s Daughter

Copyright

Published by Virago

ISBN: 978-0-349-00915-5

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © Nina Bawden 1973

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Copyright © Beneficiaries of Nina Bawden 2012

Foreword © Emma Carroll 2023

Illustrations © Alan Marks 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Virago Press

Little Brown Book Group

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.littlebrown.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

VIRAGO
MODERN CLASSICS

Nina Bawden (1925–2012) was born in London, but grew up in different parts of the UK: in Norfolk, where her mother was born, and in Wales, where she went to school as an evacuee during the Second World War. She is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for both adults and children, and many of her books have become contemporary classics, among them Carrie’s War, which has been adapted for screen and stage, and The Peppermint Pig, which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. Nina Bawden wrote over forty novels and she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as well as winning the prestigious S. T. Dupont Golden Pen Award for a lifetime’s contribution to literature.

For Margaret Gliddon

A Note from the Author

In 1941 I was evacuated from London to a Welsh mining valley. Ancient history now – and for years I thought I had forgotten about it. Then I began Carrie’s War and as I set down the first sentence, a door opened up in my mind, letting in light and memory. I remembered people and places and, most important of all, how I had felt, away from home for the first time in my life. The story is fiction, but writing it gave me a key to my past, returning me not only to my own wartime childhood, but into the skin of the girl I was then.

Nina Bawden

Before the war, with her brothers

Aged 11, in a party dress made by her grandmother

Foreword

Whenever I’m asked about my favourite books from childhood, I straight away think of Carrie’s War. I first encountered the story when it was made into a TV series in the 1970s; I’d charge home from school to watch each weekly episode. Then, when the series finished, I sought out the book at our local library, and found, to my delight, that it was even better. In adulthood, I reread Carrie’s War when I was training to be an English teacher, then again when I took the plunge and started writing; it’s one of the books that inspired my own wartime stories – proof that what we read in childhood leaves a fingerprint on our imaginations, and that great stories, no matter what your age, always shine.

Returning to Carrie’s War recently for this fiftieth-anniversary edition, I’m once again struck by what a deep, dark, deceptively simple, brilliant novel it is.

In the very first chapter, adult Carrie tells her children, ‘there’s always a reason for legends’. This is a story steeped in other stories – myths, ghosts, ogres and witches, curses, family histories and the half-truths we tell ourselves when we don’t know the whole picture. The dreamy opening page brings to mind Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and later, Mrs Gotobed swans about in the feather-trimmed ballgowns of her youth like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. The novel itself is a story within a story, as adult Carrie tells her children – and us – about her past and the people she once knew: Albert Sandwich, Hepzibah Green, Johnny Gotobed, Druid’s Bottom, the names incantations of a magical time gone by. So when Carrie then switches tone: ‘The story starts with Uncle Nick being sick …’ we’re jolted back to reality. This is the Second World War, after all, and children being taken from their homes and parents, away from everything familiar, is no fairy tale.

Carrie soon realises that her new life is full of its own conflicts. She and Nick are billeted with the grocer, Mr Evans, who is a bully. His younger sister is scared of him and his elder sister won’t speak to him. Carrie finds herself plunged into a family full of secrets and simmering resentment. It’s her insight as an outsider that makes this story so much more than simply an adventure about evacuees. Carrie doesn’t hold all the answers: she constantly doubts herself, makes mistakes and misinterprets what she’s told. Yet unlike the adults, or her forthright brother, Nick, she attempts to consider every angle of a situation. Her desire to do the right thing has a huge impact on those around her. Carrie is a peacemaker. Her attempts to bring this splintered family back together aren’t entirely successful, but they are hopeful, which is why, to me – and without giving too much away – the novel’s ending, with its suggestion of a better future feels so satisfying.

For a modern reader, there’s plenty to take from Carrie’s War. Bawden doesn’t shy away from explaining that the Gotobeds’ wealth comes from sugar and slavery, giving us a glimpse of a dark place in British history that today is finally – belatedly – being addressed. Carrie, who brings a fresh perspective that changes and enriches the life of a troubled family, is herself a girl torn from home because of war. We live in a conflict-filled world where the plight of refugees is ever apparent, yet stories like Carrie’s War remind us that in helping others we can also help ourselves.

It’s hard to believe Carrie’s War is fifty years old. If I’m here in fifty years’ time I’d put money on us still reading and loving Bawden’s novel. It’s one of my favourite books – not just from childhood, but from adulthood, too. I hope it might also be one of yours.

Emma Carroll