"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," said the 88-year-old Lessing, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this month.

She also expressed her scorn of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in her interview with the Spanish newspaper.

"I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," said Lessing. "Many of us hated Tony Blair, I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years."