Author Doris Lessing says winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 was a "bloody disaster" for her and her work. The 88-year-old author of The Good Terrorist and The Golden Notebook told the BBC she is in constant demand and has written little since winning. "All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed," she complained.
Of her writing, she said: "It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more. This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever. Use it while you've got it because it'll go. It's sliding away like water down a plughole." (More Doris Lessing stories.)