The Raj Quartet (1): The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion; Introduction by Hilary Spurling

The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's epic study of British India in its final years, has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain.

The first novel, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Man...