The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week has been described by some critics as Britain's greatest living writer. Doris Lessing will be talking to Sue Lawley about her early life in Southern Rhodesia, from where she was eventually exiled because of what the authorities called her 'subversive activities'.

She'll also be describing the bleak London where she arrived in 1950, clutching her small son, with 40 pounds in her pocket and the manuscript of her first novel, The Grass is Singing.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Tea For Two by Louis Armstrong & The All Stars
Book: A Thousand and One Nights
Luxury: Magic carpet Show less