WINNING the Nobel Prize for Literature whilst in her 80s shows the high regard West Hampstead’s Doris Lessing was held in her professional life.

 

But friends who lived near her remember a woman who, despite writing more than 50 books, found the time to be a passionate advocate for their neighbourhood. 

 

Ms Lessing, who died on Sunday, aged 94, was awarded the prize in 2007. The author of iconic bestsellers such as The Golden Notebook and Memoirs of a Survivor, discovered she had been named as a Nobel winner from hordes of reporters waiting on her doorstep as she returned to her home in Gondar Gardens.

 

But as well as writing a host of well-known tomes from her study, she also played an active part in the battle to stop a former reservoir in her street, teeming with wildlife, from being built on by property developers.

 

Partly thanks to her efforts, the former Thames Water reservoir is still not built on – though the owners are still hoping to do so.

 

The chairman of the Gondar and Agamemnon Residents Association David Yass said it was always a pleasure to bump into her in the street. He said: “We were all very sorry to hear she had passed away. She was quite private but she was still a crucial part of our community and this was her home. She had lived here for a very long time – longer than most – and she really genuinely cared about the street, the reservoir and she made that clear in our conversations.”

 

He added: “She had become more housebound recently, so we did see less of her. But over many years it has given us all great pleasure, a warm feeling to know she was part our street.”

 

Close neighbour Michael Poulard said Ms Lessing always found time to put down her pen and fight to save the site from developers.

 

He recalled how she wrote of her love for Gondar Gardens in a short story collection called London Stories. 

 

He said: “She had great intellectual clarity, but also in her neighbourly dealings, she was so lovely. Doris was one of the first members of GARA when we started in 2001. It was when she was in good health, and she would come to our meetings.”

 

She was happy to lend her name to the campaign to keep the nature reserve free from development, he recalled. 

 

He added: “I remember her writing a terrific letter to the council when the site was confirmed to being open space and a nature conservation site as part of the Unitary Development Plan in 2005. She supported strongly the principles of maintaining the reserve for wildlife, and particularly bird life, and she played a big part  in the community in this way. 

 

“We would have conversations when she was looking after her plants in her front garden. I remember when she joined the Association, we saved her membership form she filled out for many years: I would joke it was something she wrote personally for me.”

 

Nicholas Pearson, her editor at HarperCollins, said: “Doris’s long life and career was a great gift to world literature.”

The Golden Notebook was regarded as a classic feminist work, although Ms Lessing later said that her work was for both women and men.

 

Mr Pearson said: “Even in very old age she was always intellectually restless, reinventing herself, curious about the changing world around us, always completely inspirational. We’ll miss her."