After receiving notes from friends, I checked out the extract from the Naipaul biography by Patrick French at The Telegraph (UK). The extract has an easy narrative flow and answers many questions that people had about Paul Theroux’s bilious but entertaining Sir Vidia’s Shadow. French finds out that Theroux was a grasping fellow and he was often just making it up. The biographer writes: “The material in Sir Vidia’s Shadow combines the accurate, the fictional and the appropriated, and they merge to the point where they cannot be disentangled.” French doesn’t take much delight in Theroux’s lively, often excoriating, description of a lunch at Naipaul’s house. He has found out that some of it was manufactured and inaccurate. It was one of the more memorable parts in Theroux’s book. As these reports reveal, French found a subject who is strikingly honest about this cruelty, which of course will be painted in loud, lurid colors by the media. As French reveals here, he had unique access to private documents. I’m looking forward to reading the biography. When I was listening to French read on that clip, it was clear that he is going to be able to tell me more about Naipaul’s life, but even during that admittedly brief extract it struck me that rarely are biographies able to tell you about the work itself, for which, as far as Naipaul’s body of writing is concerned, the gold standard for me has been London Calling, a magisterial book-length study by Rob Nixon.

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