Doris Lessing on the Inconvenience of Success

So apparently winning the Nobel Prize has been a "bloody disaster" for Doris Lessing - now incessantly dogged for interviews and photo-shoots .

Lessing, only the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature says she no longer has time to write:

It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.

In fact, she says she's giving up writing completely.

This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever.

Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole.

Mind you, she's 88.


Listen to an interview with Doris Lessing on BBC 4's Front Row on 12 May