Naipaul is losing his grip, says tirade target

Diana Athill is one of the country's leading authors, having sold tens of thousands of copies of her books and winning the Costa Biography Prize for her memoirs Somewhere Towards The End.

This week, however, she became the subject of a tirade against female writers by VS Naipaul, who said she writes "feminine tosh".

Today Athill, 93, who was once Naipaul's publisher, responded in kind, saying the Nobel prize-winning author seemed to be "losing his grip" and calling his comments "ridiculous".

At an Intelligence 2 debate on Tuesday, Naipaul, 78, said: "Women writers are different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."

However, Athill told the Standard: "He always tended toward irritability, and it seems he is losing his grip. It is ridiculous. Taking myself out of it, you only have to think of authors like George Eliot, or Jane Austen - you cannot take it seriously.

"The books may be slightly different in nature because of different experiences, but I don't think gender has anything to do with quality. There is some terrible female writing and terrible male writing. He has been asked what he genuinely feels and what he feels seems to me to be foolishness."

Athill published 18 of Naipaul's books and worked with other celebrated writers including Philip Roth and Simone de Beauvoir.

She said it was of "no great concern" to her that they no longer speak, adding: "It became tedious because of his depression and bad temper. When he decided to leave the firm I was relieved - it made my life much easier."