Meeting V.S. Naipaul at a hotel before he gave a Manhattan Institute talk at the Harvard Club, I didn’t encounter the cranky misanthrope of legend.

Instead, the impression I had was of an old-world gentleness, and a modesty that is all too rare.

The modesty came into play as the Nobel Prize winner refused to play the part of pundit, declining to give his opinions on subjects – like the state of Islam in Arab rather than Asian countries – on which he feels insufficiently informed.

But he did throw some good jokes out at the audience, some of them on the most serious and topical of subjects.

And he pointed out that we are fighting “a war declared on you by people who passionately want one hing – a green card.”