Previously top secret files reveal that Lessing’s phone conversations, mail and movements’ were closely controlled by MI5 and Met police special branch.

Doris Lessing died in 2013 aged 94. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.

MI5 was apparently concerned about her anti-racism stance as well as her Communist Party membership.

A London-based rights activist says the revelation is nothing surprising in a “secret state” like Britain.

“News about Doris Lessing being spied on is not really very surprising. The more we have declassification of documents, the more we will find that the British secret state has been very operational,” Arzu Merali told Press TV’s UK Desk on Friday.

Listen to the interview and read the rest of the piece published on Press TV on 21 August 2015