Nobel Prize? I'Ve Won All the Prizes in Europe, Every Bloody One. So I'M Delighted. It's a Royal Flu

Oct 12, 04:40 PM

Current Headlines: By WILL PAYNE

BRITISH writer Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday - then casually remarked that it completed "a royal flush".

Feminist heroine Doris, who picked up her first award in 1954, said: "I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. So I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush."

Doris, speaking at her London home, said of the honour: "I am now 88 years old and they can't give someone one when they are dead so they probably think they ought to give me one now before I popped off."

Then she revealed: "About 40 years ago they sent one of their minions to tell me they didn't like me at the Nobel Prize and I would never get one. I don't understand why they like me any more now."

Doris's first prize was the 1954 Somerset Maugham Award of the Society of Authors.

She went on to win awards in Britain, France, Austria, Germany, Italy and America.

She is only the 11th woman to win the Nobel Prize - regarded as the most prestigious in literature - in its 106-year history and is the oldest person to get the award.

Her breakthrough novel in 1962 was The Golden Notebook, which was hailed as a pioneering work by the feminist movement.

Asked what she was going to do with her pounds 765,000 prize money, she joked: "Don't worry, a lot of people will be writing to me instantly demanding it."

will.payne@mgn.co.uk

(c) 2007 Daily Mirror. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.