Writing to his eldest son Vidia in Oxford in 1950, Seepersad Naipaul observed: "Your letters are charming in their spontaneity. If you could write me letters about things and people--especially people--at Oxford, I could compile them in a book: Letters Between a Father and Son or My Oxford Letters. Nearly fifty years later, the father's desire has been fulfilled by the son with the publication of VS Naipaul's Letters Between a Father and Son. The collection covers the period between Naipaul's departure from his native Trinidad in 1950 to study at Oxford, to the untimely death of his father in 1953 at the age of 47. Alongside the letters between father and son are those between Naipaul and his older sister, Kamla, a student at the Benares Hindu University in India, who is advised by her 17-year-old brother to watch your personal effects carefully; the Indians are a thieving lot.