Author Doris Lessing Spied on by MI5 for 20 Years

Posted on August 21, 2015

Newly declassified documents released by the British government reveal that MI5 spied on Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing for 20 years. The documents show that MI5 was quite worried about Ms. Lessing's days as a member of the Communist party.

The Guardian reports that as a single woman Doris Tayler lived in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the 1940s, she drew no attention from the spy service. But when she married communist activist Gottfried Lessing, she landed on their radar.

Lessing later repudiated Communism due to her disgust at the violent conduct of the USSR in Hungary. She renounced the Communist party, but MI5 never quite believed her. In 1956 She was banned from Southern Rhodesia and South Africa due to her support for black rights.

In 1957 one MI5 agent made an entry noting that Ms. Lessing was "disgusted with the Russian action in Hungary" and scornful of the British Communist party which she called "hopeless and gutless." The agent appears to have found the author quite compelling. He described her as "an attractive, forceful, dangerous, woman, ruthless if need be." That entry is actually rather flattering.

The documents show that Ms. Lessing was spied up on round the clock for two decades. Her correspondence was monitored, her movements were tracked and her left wing political views were scrupulously recorded.

Ms. Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 at the age of 88. She died in November 2013, at the age of 94. The cover of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade, is pictured above.