Background and Influences

Abstract

Doris Lessing was born in Persia in 1919, of British parents. Her father, Alfred Tayler, had fought in the First World War. He was badly wounded, and as a result of his injuries he had a leg amputated. He subsequently married Maud McVeigh, one of the nurses who had looked after him in hospital. After the war he went to work for the Imperial Bank of Persia in Tehran, but on leave in 1925 he went to the Empire Exhibition in London and was attracted to the idea of farming in Southern Rhodesia. On impulse he went to Africa the same year, taking his wife and two young children, and bought three thousand acres of land with a government loan.