The series of books was dramatised by Granada Television during the 1980s and won Scott the public and critical acclaim that he had not received during his lifetime.

[2] Scott was educated at the private Winchmore Hill Collegiate School, but had to leave early, without any qualifications, as his father's business met financial difficulties.

Scott worked as an accounts clerk for C. T. Payne and took evening classes in book-keeping and wrote poetry in his spare time.

He later noted that the rigid social hierarchies and codes of his suburban childhood he found echoed in British Indian society.

He had been initially appalled by what he found on the subcontinent—by the heat, dust, poverty, disease, and overcrowding, above all by the imperial attitudes of the British—but over the next three years he fell deeply in love with India.

In 1943, at the age of 22, Scott was posted as a commissioned officer in the British Indian Army, and he sailed on the Athlone Castle from Liverpool that year.

In 1941, before his military posting, Scott had published a collection of three religious poems entitled I, Gerontius, as part of the Resuram Series of pamphlets.

[3][5][2] Whilst there, authors he covered included Arthur C. Clarke, Morris West, M. M. Kaye, Elizabeth David, Mervyn Peake and Muriel Spark.

[2][3] One biographer notes that as an agent, Scott "sheltered nervous talents, supported frail ones, pruned back bogus growth, detected and cherished genuine achievement in the wildest and most undisciplined bolters.

The Alien Sky (US title, Six Days in Marapore) appeared in 1953, and was followed by A Male Child (1956), The Mark of the Warrior (1958), and The Chinese Love Pavilion (1960).

[2] Funded by his publishers, Heinemann, Scott flew to India in 1964, in a last ditch effort to found a career as a successful novelist and, thereby, solvency.

He drew there material for his next five novels, all set in India during and immediately after World War II, in the period leading to independence and Partition.

"[2] Probably only an outsider could have commanded the long, lucid perspectives he brought to bear on the end of the British raj, exploring with passionate, concentrated attention a subject still generally treated as taboo, or fit only for historical romance and adventure stories...

[7] His long standing gastric illness was exacerbated by the visit to India, and on his return he had to undergo painful treatment, but afterwards felt better than he had for many years and began to write.

Granada Television showed Staying On, with Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson as Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy.

[11] In the David Higham Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin can be found Scott's correspondence with clients Arthur C. Clarke, M. M. Kaye, Muriel Spark, children's author Mary Patchett, Peter Green, Morris West, Gabriel Fielding and John Braine.

Janis Haswell edited a two-volume collection of Scott’s letters; Volume I, The Early Years (1940–1965) covers the military period of his life and the first stage of his career, before the quartet of novels was published.

"[7] Scott's wife Penny had supported him throughout the writing of The Raj Quartet, despite his heavy drinking and violent behaviour, but once it was complete she left him and filed for divorce.