Lessing was born in Iran as Doris May Tayler. Her father worked as a clerk at the Imperial Bank of Persia. The family moved back to Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), a British colony, in 1925.
Captain Alfred Tayler, the author’s father, lost his leg during World War I. While recovering at the Royal Free Hospital he met Emily Maude Tayler, a nurse and later his wife and mother of the author.
The author left school at age 14 and was self-educated ever since.
At age 15 the author started selling stories to magazines in South Africa.
Gottfried Lessing was the author’s second husband (1947 – 1949). Mrs. Lessing did not marry after her second divorce.
Lessing was interested in communist causes and for a while was part of the British Communist Party. In 2015 it turned out that MI5 and MI6 had a five volume secret file on her and her associations with Communists and anti-racism activities.
In 2007 Mrs. Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was the eleventh (and oldest) woman to win the prize.
In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s achievement in British literature.
She was ranked 5th on The Times’ 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
Lessing published more than 50 novels before her death.
A father, husband, avid reader, blogger, software engineer & wood worker who is known the world over as a man of many interests and to his wife as “an idiot”.
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