Paul Scott (novelist) and John Braine. Extensive collection of letters to correspondents and their responses, University of Tulsa McFarlin Library Paul Scott (novelist) Paul Mark Scott (25 March 19201 March 1978) was an English novelist, playwright, and poet, best known for his monumental tetralogy "The Raj Quartet." His novel "Staying On" won the Booker Prize for 1977. Paul Scott was born in Palmers Green, in Southgate, London, then in Middlesex, the younger of two sons. His father, Thomas (1870–1958), was a Yorkshireman who moved to London in the 1920s and was a commercial artist specializing in furs and lingerie. His mother, Frances, née
John Braine small town five miles up the Aire Valley . Although he wrote 12 works of fiction, Braine is chiefly remembered today for his first novel, "Room at the Top" (1957). The novel was conceived when he was being treated for tuberculosis in a hospital near the Yorkshire Dales town of Grassington. He stated that his favourite author was Guy de Maupassant and that "Room at the Top" was based on "Bel Ami", but that "the critics didn't pick it up". "Room at the Top" was turned into a successful 1959 film, with Laurence Harvey as Joe Lampton and featuring an