Patrick French, the British writer and historian best known for his biography of VS Naipaul, died on Thursday morning. He was 56, and had been battling cancer for four years. French is survived by his wife, Meru Gokhale, who was formerly the editor in chief at Penguin Random House India.
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.
Tributes to French poured in on social media from many writers and friends. “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. He was funny & clever & charming, always full of enthusiasm & energy. He was also the greatest biographer of our generation,” wrote historian William Dalrymple.
“I have known Patrick for many years and enjoyed his writing. 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.
Born in England in 1966, French arrived in India as a young journalist in 1998, for a New Yorker assignment. When he first met Naipaul, French is said to have complained about the famously fastidious fact-checkers in the magazine. “Don’t let The New Yorker worry you,” Naipaul reportedly said: “The New Yorker knows nothing about writing. Nothing. 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). It went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award. French has been bestowed with several other accolades including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and the Somerset Maugham Award.
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 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.
“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. 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. Naipaul was a shared interest between them. They often ran into each other in Kolkata. Chaudhuri and French had conducted a non-fiction writing workshop together in 2013. “I once went to Someplace Else (a Live music venue) with him. 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. “But after that, he fell ill.’
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.
Tributes to French poured in on social media from many writers and friends. “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. He was funny & clever & charming, always full of enthusiasm & energy. He was also the greatest biographer of our generation,” wrote historian William Dalrymple.
“I have known Patrick for many years and enjoyed his writing. 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.
Born in England in 1966, French arrived in India as a young journalist in 1998, for a New Yorker assignment. When he first met Naipaul, French is said to have complained about the famously fastidious fact-checkers in the magazine. “Don’t let The New Yorker worry you,” Naipaul reportedly said: “The New Yorker knows nothing about writing. Nothing. 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). It went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award. French has been bestowed with several other accolades including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and the Somerset Maugham Award.
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 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.
“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. 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. Naipaul was a shared interest between them. They often ran into each other in Kolkata. Chaudhuri and French had conducted a non-fiction writing workshop together in 2013. “I once went to Someplace Else (a Live music venue) with him. 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. “But after that, he fell ill.’