Lessing: Nobel prize was ‘bloody disaster’

Doris Lessing claims that winning the Nobel Prize for literature, as she did last autumn, has been "a bloody disaster" and that it has caused her nothing but suffering and misery. "All I do now is give interviews and spend time being photographed," the 88-year-old writer moans in an interview on the BBC Radio 4 arts programme Front Row, to be broadcast today.

Lessing, who was too ill to travel to Stockholm to receive the prize, also says that since being conferred with the honour she has suffered a bad back and heart problems. "I'm now a crock. I have a very limited life and only go out reluctantly."

Lessing gave the interview to publicise her latest book, Alfred & Emily ­ - the names of her father and mother - ­ which is half fiction, half autobiography. Talking about her troubled relationship with her mother, she says: "I was chemically wrong for her and we were bound not to get on. It was a tragedy for her, but not for me."

The author believes the book will almost certainly be her last. "I have no time to write. I also don't have the energy any more. This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, "Don't imagine you will have it for ever.
Use it while you've got it because it will go". It's sliding away like water down a plughole."