Abstract
I was surprised to read in the JRSM, of all places, a gratuitous reference to VS Naipaul's ‘racism’ from Jim Thornton, 1 who has just read a new biography of the great writer. 2 The biographer, Patrick French, indeed pulls no punches (like Naipaul himself), yet he does not call his subject a racist or show him to be one. If the charge is levelled with tiresome regularity by certain PC critics, this is because Naipaul has not fallen for the fallacy of ‘the superior virtue of the oppressed’, as Bertrand Russell, not a racist either, once called it. To read Naipaul's works with both eyes open is to understand that they are one long and masterful plea for human dignity and freedom. His knighthood and Nobel Prize are an honour, not just to him, but to Britain and the world.
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