Editing Doris Lessing (section)

=== Move to London; political views ===
After the divorce, Doris's interest was drawn to the community around the [[Left Book Club]], an organisation she had joined the year before.<ref name="dobref">{{cite web|url=http://www.dorislessing.org/biography.html|title=Biography|access-date=11 October 2007|year=1995|work=A Reader's Guide to The Golden Notebook and Under My Skin|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last=Lessing | first=Doris | title=A Home for the Highland Cattle and the Antheap |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5twsK0hVK2MC&q=doris+lessing+left+book+club+1942&pg=PA27| publisher=Broadview Press | publication-place=Petersborough | date=2003-08-20 | isbn=978-1-55111-363-0 | page=27}}</ref> It was here that she met her future second husband, [[Gottfried Lessing]]. They married shortly after she joined the group, and had a child together (Peter, 1946–2013), before they divorced in 1949. She did not marry again.<ref name="scifirefa"/> Lessing also had a love affair with RAF serviceman John Whitehorn (brother of journalist [[Katharine Whitehorn]]), who was stationed in Southern Rhodesia, and wrote him ninety letters between 1943 and 1949.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Flood|first1=Alison|title=Doris Lessing donates revelatory letters to university|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/oct/22/doris-lessing-letters|work=The Guardian|date=22 October 2008}}</ref>

Lessing moved to London in 1949 with her younger son, Peter, to pursue her writing career and socialist beliefs, but left the two older children with their father Frank Wisdom. She later said that at the time she saw no choice: "For a long time I felt I had done a very brave thing. There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children. I felt I wasn't the best person to bring them up. I would have ended up an alcoholic or a frustrated intellectual like my mother."<ref>[http://mag.newsweek.com/2010/05/06/lowering-the-bar.html "Lowering the Bar. When bad mothers give us hope"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150430141440/http://mag.newsweek.com/2010/05/06/lowering-the-bar.html |date=30 April 2015 }}, ''[[Newsweek]]'', 6 May 2010. Retrieved 9 May 2010.</ref>

As well as [[Nuclear disarmament|campaigning against nuclear arms]], she was an active opponent of [[apartheid]], which led her to being banned from South Africa and Rhodesia in 1956 for many years.<ref name=obit /> In the same year, following the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Soviet invasion of Hungary]], she left the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]].<ref>{{cite news|last=Miller|first=Stephen|title=Nobel Author Doris Lessing Dies at 94|url=https://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304439804579203804274045712|access-date=23 November 2013|newspaper=The Wall Street Journal|date=17 November 2013}}</ref> In the 1980s, when Lessing was vocal in her opposition to Soviet actions in Afghanistan,<ref>[http://www.csmonitor.com/1988/0114/dbless.html "Doris Lessing blows the veil of romanticism off Afghanistan"], ''The Christian Science Monitor'', 14 January 1988.</ref> she gave her views on feminism, communism and science fiction in an interview with ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref name="space fiction"/>

On 21 August 2015, a five-volume secret file on Lessing, built up by both [[MI5]] and [[MI6]], was made public and placed in [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|The National Archives]].<ref>Shirbon, Estelle, [https://web.archive.org/web/20160307164336/http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-mi5-lessing-idUKKCN0QP2DY20150820?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews "British spies reveal file on Nobel-winner Doris Lessing"], Reuters, 21 August 2015.</ref> The file, which contains documents that are redacted in parts, shows Lessing was under surveillance by MI5 and MI6 for around twenty years, from the early-1940s onwards. Her associations with communist organisations and political activism were reported to be the reasons for the surveillance of Lessing.<ref>Norton-Taylor, Richard, [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/21/mi5-spied-on-doris-lessing-for-20-years-declassified-documents-reveal "MI5 spied on Doris Lessing for 20 years, declassified documents reveal"], ''The Guardian'', 21 August 2015.</ref>

Disaffected, and turning away from Marxist political philosophy, Lessing became increasingly absorbed with mystical and spiritual matters, devoting herself especially to the [[Sufism|Sufi]] tradition.<ref>Hajer Elarem, 2015. "A Quest for Selfhood: Deconstructing and Reconstructing Female Identity in Doris Lessing's Early Fiction", academic paper. Université de Franche-Comté.</ref>