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The Raj Quartet 1: The Jewel in the Crown, A Division of the Spoils

When the sun finally set

Paul Scott, introduced by Hilary Spurling
Everyman, 1032pp, £14.99,

Margaret MacMillan

Tuesday, 11th December 2007

Margaret MacMillan

There are times when Scott is so anxious that his readers understand the politics of those last days that he becomes a bore, grasping you by the lapels and insisting that you listen to yet another lecture on the Indian National Congress or the Viceroy’s latest moves. You forgive him much, though, because his characters are so vivid. Clumsy, shy, awkward and brave Daphne Manners. The heart-breaking Hari Kumar. Barbie Batchelor who leaves confusion in her wake ‘like clues to the direction taken by the cheery and indefatigable leader of a paper chase whose ultimate destination was not clear to anybody, including herself’. Merrick of course, who preys on the vulnerable and weaves his plots around them like a brisk spider, is one of the great villains of literature. He is one of your ‘hollow men’ who has built himself an almost perfect casing, says the elegant old White Russian Bronowsky, himself a wonderful creation.

Scott’s characters are buffeted by great events, by what he describes as the ‘perpetually moving stream of history’, and it is that interplay between lives, often of very ordinary people, and the great world of events that make his novels worth reading yet again. Today we may finally have enough perspective to see the long and complicated shared history of Britain and India not so much as a matter of shame or of an amused nostalgia but as an episode which left its mark on each and as an example of the ways in which power affects relationships among peoples of different backgrounds and cultures.