Doris Lessing: Reluctant Heroine

"Doris Lessing was out shopping for groceries when the Nobel Prize announcement came. Arriving home to a gathering of reporters, she exclaimed, "Oh Christ! "I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush."She titled her Nobel Lecture On Not Winning the Nobel Prize and used it to draw attention to global inequality of opportunity and to explore changing attitudes to storytelling and literature. The lecture was later published in a limited edition to raise money for children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Her final book, Alfred & Emily appeared in 2008.