![]() A culinary delight at Oakridge International School.Netanyahu urges military chief to contain reservist protest.New pension protests in France ahead of crucial votes.Former Taiwan president Ma to visit China in landmark trip.China condemns British lawmakers for ignoring demand not to visit Taiwan.Ruling party likely to sweep Kazakh parliamentary election.And I remember him saying how one could never escape Hotel California in India,” recalls Chaudhuri, who last interacted with French at the University of East Anglia when French wanted to access the archives for a biography of British novelist Doris Lessing. “I once went to Someplace Else (a Live music venue) with him. Chaudhuri and French had conducted a non-fiction writing workshop together in 2013. They often ran into each other in Kolkata. Naipaul was a shared interest between them. He may have been a bit more upbeat about this new India than many of us, but it points to a kind of generosity that he invested in it as an observer and as a writer,” says novelist, poet, essayist, critic and composer Amit Chaudhuri who had a “relaxed and jokey” dynamic with French. “He was coming at the end of a line of English travel writers and biographers who were reviewing the new world and histories created by colonialism but at the same time, he was amongst a new line of Western people engaging with a new India. French had shot back saying, “it is the cheapest shot in the locker to compare any foreigner you disagree with to a British imperialist,” and calling attention to Mishra’s own elite connections. In a famous literary feud, novelist Pankaj Mishra had called historian Patrick French “a Curzon without an Empire,” skewering his biography, ‘India: A Portrait’, as glossing over the country’s poverty. French has been bestowed with several other accolades including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and the Somerset Maugham Award. It went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award. Writing an article there is like posting a letter in a Venezuelan postbox nobody will read it.” Around three years after this meeting, French was invited to write an authorised biography of the Nobel laureate, titled: The World Is What It Is (2008). “Don’t let The New Yorker worry you,” Naipaul reportedly said: “The New Yorker knows nothing about writing. When he first met Naipaul, French is said to have complained about the famously fastidious fact-checkers in the magazine. Young Husband was an excellent historical work and captured the very essence of war, intrigue and the great game that the Imperialists played,” said Sanjoy Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts.īorn in England in 1966, French arrived in India as a young journalist in 1998, for a New Yorker assignment. “I have known Patrick for many years and enjoyed his writing. He was also the greatest biographer of our generation,” wrote historian William Dalrymple. ![]() He was funny & clever & charming, always full of enthusiasm & energy. “Heartbroken to hear about the death of Patrick French, who I have loved and admired since we were both thirteen, and who was the Best Man at my wedding. ![]() Tributes to French poured in on social media from many writers and friends. ![]() Author of several books on India and Tibet, including Younghusband, Liberty or Death, Tibet, and The World Is What It Is, French had declined the Order of the British Empire in 2003 to preserve his ‘independence as a writer’, and had also called out the imperial associations of the award. French is survived by his wife, Meru Gokhale, who was formerly the editor in chief at Penguin Random House India. He was 56, and had been battling cancer for four years. Patrick French, the British writer and historian best known for his biography of VS Naipaul, died on Thursday morning.
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