Dancing with the Queen of Sweden

Nicholas Pearson, Publishing Director of Fourth Estate, is in Sweden to read Doris Lessing’s Nobel lecture.

Stockholm is decorated for Christmas. The windows of the magnificent buildings that border the waterfront are lit with triangles of candles, the Christmas tree near the Royal Palace is ablaze with lights, and the shops and restaurants have oil candles on their doorsteps.

Even one or two of the boats bobbing on the jetties have little decorated trees jutting from their foredecks, their rails wrapped in lights. It is a terrible shame that Doris Lessing isn’t here to see it and accept her magnificent award.

Laureates and their families started arriving days ago, and since then the winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature have been giving their acceptance lectures at venues all over Stockholm (the Peace Prize takes place in a separate ceremony in Oslo).

We all stay at the Grand Hotel, the glitziest in the city, where even to stare at a piece of gravalax costs about £50. In the foyer we are met by people from the Nobel Foundation, and if there could be any doubt about the achievement that is the Nobel Prize for Literature, it is quickly dispelled by a quick glance at the poster they offer, showing the photographs of all 104 winners since 1901.

Staring at me is a roll of honour that includes W B Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, T S Eliot, William Faulkner, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemmingway, Albert Camus, John Steinbeck, Samuel Beckett, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who was one of the first to ring Doris and congratulate her), William Golding, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, V S Naipaul, J M Coetzee, Harold Pinter, and last year Orhan Pamuk. Doris Lessing is only the tenth woman to win the prize.

On Friday evening I made my way to the Swedish Academy to deliver Doris’s Acceptance lecture on her behalf. I was greeted by members of the Committee and shown the great library, where the books of all the Nobel winners are kept. I was taken into a side room and in a small ceremony presented with a book to take to London for Doris. It is a science fiction epic poem by Harry Martinson, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1974. In this well-known poem in Swedish literature, Martinson has space-travellers looking back to their beloved home, Mother Earth, here named Doris.

As 5.30 drew near the committee and I made our way into the great hall, where ambassadors, writers, Doris’s daughter and grandchildren from Cape Town, and hundreds of others had gathered for the lecture. Doris Lessing is an incredibly popular winner here in Sweden. The lecture was broadcast live on television. If you are interested in seeing it, there is a video of the whole speech on the nobelprize.org website. It was the greatest privilege of my publishing life to perform this task for a writer I love.

The highlight of Saturday was without question the Nobel Prize concert, in honour of the laureates, in the presence of the King of Sweden and this year conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy and featuring the extraordinary pianist Lang Lang. This was the first time these two had performed together.

A few years ago Lang Lang recorded Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto and, in his own words, had very much emphasised the darkness and anxiety in the composer’s soul. For this occasion, Lang Lang indicated that his interpretation would ‘tend more towards red — more heat and passion’. His performance was absolutely breathtaking.

Yesterday, there was a small lunch with the British Ambassador at his residency, for Doris’s family, and for Martin Evans and his family. Martin Evans, also British, has been awarded the Nobel this year for his work in stem cell research, which he pioneered in the early 80s. More speeches, a touching one from Martin, who quoted our own Gwyneth Lewis. The British Ambassador’s absence from the lecture was explained — he had been on a plane going to Brussels with David Milliband. In truth, the academy had been rather disappointed. Korea had been there, and India!

Later in the day, there was a champagne reception at the Nordic Museum, next to the Vasa Museum where the restored galleon that sank in the harbour in 1628 is housed. It was pulled from the mud and painstakingly restored over twenty years, and opened to the public in 1990. This is a must for anyone who comes to this city.

From there we were taken to the Bonniers’ great family home for a dinner to celebrate Doris. Many of her foreign publishers were there, from Finland, Holland, Germany, HarperCollins in New York (Terry Karten had flown to London and back the previous day, to have tea with Doris). Inge Feltrinelli, who had dresses made in Milan for Doris, arrived with a lovely scrapbook of photographs of her. All sixty of us wrote messages to Doris which we will take back to London for her.

Today is the big day, the Award Ceremony at the Concert Hall. My white tie and tails are hanging in the cupboard. We think that Doris will be spoken to on the phone from the stage. And then on to the Nobel Banquet in the Blue Hall of the City Hall, where I will dance with the Queen of Sweden . . .