Lessing’s remedy for her parents’ war horrors

Alfred & Emily, By Doris Lessing, 4th Estate, €18.30

Last year in Flanders, the funeral took place of a local farmer blown up in his field by a World War I shell, which had worked its way to the surface over the previous 90 years. It was a reminder that, while wars end, their consequences live on.

The parents of the 2007 Nobel Prize winner, Doris Lessing, may have survived World War I, ...