Why Lessing turned down damehood

While she was happy to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature last year, and the £750,000 cheque that came with it, Doris Lessing has proved less interested in becoming a Dame of the British Empire, a title that has been conferred on fellow writers Edith Sitwell, Freya Stark and, in more recent times, children's author Jacqueline Wilson.

It turns out the 88-year-old writer was asked to become a Dame in 1992 at the behest of the then Prime Minister, John Major. But Lessing, a former member of the Communist party, and author of Memoirs of a Survivor and The Good Terrorist, turned down the offer saying that it had a whiff of "Ruritania" about it.

In a gently mocking letter written to Alex Allan, Major's principal private secretary at the time, she said: "Thank you for offering me this honour: I am very pleased. But for some time now I have been wondering, 'But where is this British Empire?' Surely, there isn't one. And now I see that I am not the only one saying the same. There is something ruritanical about honours given in the name of a non-existent Empire."

She went further, recalling her early life in South Africa, where she was born and lived until coming to London in her twenties: "When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia. And surely there is something unlikeable about a person, when old, accepting honours from a insitution (sic) she attacked when young?"

The letter has come to light because it is an an archive of more than 100 letters and notes Lessing donated to the University of East Anglia. In a mischievous finale, she wrote: "And yet...how pleasant to be a dame! I would adore it. Dame of what? Dame of Britain? Dame of the British Islands? Dame of the British Commonwealth? Dame of ....? Never mind. Please forgive my churlishness. I am sorry, I really am."

Lessing, who also rejected an OBE in 1977, finally accepted the title of Companion of Honour for "conspicuous national service" in the 2000 New Year's Honours List. She said she liked the title because "you're not called anything - and it's not demanding. I like that." ·