Doris Lessing explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War. Her father wanted the life of an English farmer, but shrapnel almost killed him in the trenches, & thereafter had to wear a wooden leg. Her mother's great love was a doctor, who drowned in the Channel, & she spent the war nursing the wounded.
Doris Lessing was one of the most important writers of the second half of the 20th-century and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist. In 2001, Lessing was awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in British literature. In 2008, The Times ranked her fifth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". She died in 2013.