Doris Lessing Donates Correspondence to University

Posted on October 23, 2008

Nobel prize winning author Doris Lessing has donated a collection of her personal letters to the University of East Anglia. Some of the correspondence includes letters she wrote explaining why she turned down the offer of a Damehood.

Doris Lessing described winning the Nobel prize as a "bloody disaster", so perhaps it's unsurprising that she turned down a Damehood. Offered the honour in 1992 by Alex Allan, then principal private secretary to the prime minister, Lessing declined on the grounds that the British Empire no longer exists.
"Thank you for offering me this honour: I am very pleased. But for some time now I have been wondering, 'But where is this British Empire?', Lessing wrote to Allan. "Surely, there isn't one. And now I see that I am not the only one saying the same. There is something ruritannical about honours given in the name of a non-existent Empire."
Lessing, now 89, said that when she was young, she did her best "to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia", saying that "surely there is something unlikeable about a person, when old, accepting honours from a institution she attacked when young?".
Her letter to Allan finished on a whimsical note. "And yet... how pleasant to be a dame! I would adore it. Dame of what? Dame of Britain? Dame of the British Islands? Dame of the British Commonwealth? Dame of ....? Never mind. Please forgive my churlishness. I am sorry, I really am."

We have no doubt that the rest of her correspondence is equally interesting. What a shame it will be when there are no more letters to read. Will they print out a famous author's emails and display them in a case in a museum? Somehow, it's just not the same.