imagine...: Season 13, Episode 1

13 - 1: Doris Lessing - The Reluctant Heroine

Another chance to see a rare film made with writer Doris Lessing, five years before her recent death at the age of 94. Alan Yentob meets this acerbic, forthright yet warm woman, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Brought up in southern Africa, she took London by storm in 1950. She has believed in 'ban the bomb' and telepathy, been a Communist and a 'Free Woman', written realist novels and science fiction. She is perhaps most remembered for her raw and revealing Golden Notebook, which inspired and influenced a generation of women.