DORIS LESSING, 88
AUTHOR
The agreeably prickly writer from West Hampstead has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was presented with the award in London as she was too ill to travel to Sweden. However, what the writer of The Golden Notebook and The Grass Is Singing lacks in physical vigour, she makes up for in intellectual rigour. Her literary influence is enormous and she is astonishingly well connected with friends including Sir Tom Stoppard, Michael Frayn, Alan Rickman, Ben Okri and Juliet Stevenson. Her next book, Alfred And Emily, is published in May.