London: V.S. Naipaul's long physical and literary journey from his birthplace, Trinidad, via India, the land of his forefathers, to England, his adopted home, ended on Wednesday morning at West London Crematorium in Kensal Green Cemetery.

It was essentially a non-religious affair for someone who was nominally a Hindu, although Geordie Greig, the new editor of the Daily Mail who took a leading role at the funeral service, did sneak in a couple of lines from the Bhagavad Gita.

The service in the West Chapel was attended by 80-100 friends and literary associates of the 2001 Nobel Prize winner for literature from the UK, US and elsewhere and a few close relatives, including his wife, Lady Nadira Naipaul. The author would have been relieved the majority of mourners were white.

Spotted among the mourners, however, were publisher Sonny Mehta and his author wife Gita Mehta.

Also present was Alexander Waugh, son of the late journalist, Auberon Waugh, who was himself the son of the novelist, Evelyn Waugh (of Scoop and Brideshead Revisited fame).

Naipaul died, aged 85, at his home in London on August 11. Grieg, who was summoned to his friend's bedside, read one of the author's favourite poems, Tennyson's Crossing The Bar, as he slipped away.

Naipaul retained a soft spot for the Eton-educated Grieg. In a moving farewell address, Greig recalled how he had first met Naipaul and ended by assessing his lasting literary legacy.

It does seem that under his editorship the Daily Mail will be a kinder paper that than the aggressive pro-Brexit organ over which his predecessor, Paul Dacre, had presided.

In due course, there will be a memorial service, which will be a much more public affair than the very private "by invitation only" funeral. Nadira has not yet said where Naipaul's ashes will be dispersed. It certainly won't be in Trinidad.

Being born there, Naipaul had once said, was a "mistake".

What would Naipaul have written about his own funeral service?

He would have listened with characteristic old fashioned courtesy as his agent, Andrew Wylie, who had come from New York and who includes Salman Rushdie and Patrick French (Naipaul's biographer) in his stable, rendered his version of Remembrance.

He would certainly have liked two of the pieces of music - one was The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams, an English classic.

The other was Doris Day's Dream A Little Dream of Me, which concluded with the lyrics, "Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you/Sweet dreams that leave all worries far behind you/But in your dreams whatever they be/Dream a little dream of me." There was also a reading from Naipaul's 1987 novel, The Enigma of Arrival.