Page 34 Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 4, 2020
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@sebshakespeareFriday 13th tempts
fate for celebration
of V.S. Naipaul’s life
Sheridan’s baby
name dilemma:
Storm...
or Colin?
PREGNANT actress Sheridan
Smith is having difficulty
choosing a name for her
unborn son.
‘We were thinking of
naming him after my dad
but my dad’s name was
Colin. As much as we miss
and love him, there are
cooler names in the
world such as Storm
and River,’ Sheridan
t e l l s m e a t P r e t t y
Woman: The Musical at
the Piccadilly Theatre.
where she was flanked
by fiance Jamie Horn.
She insists she will
return to work as
soon as the baby
arrives in spring. ‘I’m
chomping at the bit,’
Sheridan admits.ACTREss Caroline
Quentin, who turns 60 this
year, says she doesn’t mind
growing old. ‘Not at all,’ she
says. ‘I’m actually looking
forward to it. Life at the
moment feels fantastic. I’m
working, I’m healthy, sam
and I have three amazing
children. Bring it on!’
Her husband, sam Farmer, is
12 years her junior, but she
says people no longer make a
fuss about the age gap. ‘They■ did when we first got
together, but that’s over
20 years ago.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it? If the
age gap was the other way
around, nobody would be
bothered — but if a woman
goes out with a younger man,
he becomes her toyboy.
‘I don’t think people care
about stuff like that any
more. I’ve got friends in their
30s and friends in their 80s.
Age doesn’t matter.’H
e was the great-
est writer of our
a g e a n d i t w a s
billed as his final
farewell. But next
week’s memorial for novelist
sir Vidia Naipaul at the
National Portrait Gallery has
been postponed due to the
spread of coronavirus.
Publishers from all over the world
were invited to gather on Friday,
March 13th to pay homage to the
Nobel laureate and Booker prize
w i n n er w h o se w o rk h a s been
translated into 34 languages and
who died, aged 85, in 2018.
O s c a r- w i n n i n g a c t o r J e r e m y
I r o n s h a d a g r e e d t o g i v e a
special reading.
a family friend tells me: ‘Nothingever stopped Vidia from his intrepid
travels, be it a revolution in Iran
and witchcraft in africa or even
genteel uprisings in wiltshire. so
it’s entirely understandable that it
would have to take something as
dramatic as a pandemic pestilence
to postpone his final farewell.’
V. s. Naipaul penned more than 30
books, including The enigma Of
arrival and a House For Mr Biswas,and was knighted in 1990. Born and
brought up in poverty in Trinidad
— which he later said was ‘a great
mistake’ as he didn’t like the cli-
mate or the heat or the loudness
and felt he was in the wrong place
— he won a government scholarship
to r e a d e n g l i s h a t O x f o r d ’ s
U n i v e r s i t y C o l l e g e , w h e r e h e
suffered a nervous breakdown.
The service was being organised
for next Friday by his widow Nadira,
a distinguished Pakistani writer
who protects his legacy with lioness-
like grit and charm.
His last book, Grief, about the
death of his beloved cat augustus,
is being published posthumously.
Naipaul had a famously under-
stated wit, once teasing salman
Rushdie by describing ayatollah
K h o m e i n i ’ s 1 9 8 9 f a t w a o n
the author as ‘an extreme form of
literary criticism’.ACTREss Miriam Margolyes is
truly conflicted. ‘I’m happy with
my face, but I’m disgusted by my
body,’ she says. ‘I’ve been on diets
all my life. It’s a constant battle.
If I could migrate my personality
and my face onto another body,
I’d be delighted. Whose body?
Claudia Winkleman’s!’■