There are plenty of reasons to dislike VS Naipaul, his talent notwithstanding.  Now this: Asked whether or not any woman writer was his match, he predictably answered No, and then put in a gratuitous swipe at Austen:

I “couldn’t possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world,” he said.

One wonders when he last cast an eye over one of Austen’s novels.