Nobel winner Doris Lessing, the beloved curmudgeon

Doris Lessing, who died Sunday at age 94, began her literary career as a political incendiary and ended it as a British national treasure. By then, she had been acclaimed by the world. When she won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2007, the oldest writer and the 11th woman to receive it, the British reveled in her grumpy reception of the news. Returning from a shopping trip to her North London home, Lessing was confronted by a horde of journalists and camera crews. "Oh, Christ," she remarked. Si...