Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-62

The second volume of one of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century. In 'Walking in the Shade' we move into the heyday of Lessing's career, sparked off by the international success of her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing'. A wonderful evocation of London's literary and political life during the 1950s and 1960s. Doris Lessing was at the very centre of the intellectual scene at that time, and knew many of its personalities and opinion-makers -- Kenneth Tynan, John Osborne, EP Thompson, Bertrand Russell and many others. Perhaps the most frank and open book Doris Lessing has ever written. She writes about her involvement with communism, her love affairs, her depression at the ending of a relationship and her experience of bringing up a child on her own.