Her associations with Communism and her anti-racist activism are reported to be the reasons for the secret service interest in Lessing.ĭisaffected, and turning away from Marxist political philosophy, Lessing became increasingly absorbed with mystical and spiritual matters, devoting herself especially to the Sufi tradition. The file, which contains documents that are redacted in parts, shows Lessing was under surveillance by British spies for around twenty years, from the early-1940s onwards. On 21 August 2015, a five-volume secret file on Lessing built up by the British intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, was made public and placed in The National Archives. In the 1980s, when Lessing was vocal in her opposition to Soviet actions in Afghanistan, she gave her views on feminism, communism and science fiction in an interview with The New York Times. In the same year, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary, she left the British Communist Party. I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother." Īs well as campaigning against nuclear arms, she was an active opponent of apartheid, which led her to being banned from South Africa and Rhodesia in 1956 for many years. I felt I wasn't the best person to bring them up. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. She later said that at the time she saw no choice: "For a long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. Lessing moved to London in 1949 with her younger son, Peter, to pursue her writing career and socialist beliefs, but left the two older children with their father Frank Wisdom. Lessing also had a love affair with RAF serviceman John Whitehorn (brother of journalist Katharine Whitehorn), who was stationed in Southern Rhodesia, and wrote him ninety letters between 19. They married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together (Peter, 1946–2013), before they divorced in 1949. It was here that she met her future second husband, Gottfried Lessing. Move to London political views Īfter the divorce, Doris's interest was drawn to the community around the Left Book Club, an organisation she had joined the year before. Lessing left the family home in 1943, leaving the two children with their father. In 1937 Doris moved to Salisbury to work as a telephone operator, and she soon married her first husband, civil servant Frank Wisdom, with whom she had two children (John, 1940–1992, and Jean, born in 1941), before the marriage ended in 1943. She started reading material that her employer gave her on politics and sociology and began writing around this time. She left home at 15 and worked as a nursemaid. She left school at age 13 and was self-educated from then on. Then followed a year at Girls High School in Salisbury. Īs a girl Doris was educated first at the Dominican Convent High School, a Roman Catholic convent all-girls school in the Southern Rhodesian capital of Salisbury (now Harare). It might have been possible had the family been wealthy in reality, they were short of money and the farm delivered very little income. In the rough environment, his wife Emily aspired to lead an Edwardian lifestyle. In 1925 the family moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to farm maize and other crops on about 1,000 acres (400 ha) of bush that Alfred bought. The couple moved to Iran, for Alfred to take a job as a clerk for the Imperial Bank of Persia. Her father, who had lost a leg during his service in World War I, met his future wife, a nurse, at the Royal Free Hospital in London where he was recovering from his amputation. Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Kermanshah, Iran, on 22 October 1919, to Captain Alfred Tayler and Emily Maude Tayler (née McVeagh), both British subjects. In 2008 The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". In 2001 Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. Lessing was the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, at age 87. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983). Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1937 to Salisbury, England, followed by London in 1949. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Doris May Lessing CH OMG ( née Tayler 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist.
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