Old menace

For twenty years the British secret service considered novelist Doris Lessing a potential threat to national security based on items like this one:

In 1956, Special Branch informed MI5 that Lessing, whom it described as “of plump build”, had moved into a flat in Warwick Road, London SW5. “Her flat is frequently visited by persons of various nationality,” it reported, “including Americans, Indians, Chinese and Negroes.” The report added: “It is possible that the flat is being used for immoral purposes.”

Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007.