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
Room at the Top (novel) future he can take pride in. In Warley, he takes lodgings with the Thompsons, a middle class couple living in the better part of town, known locally as "T'top". Lampton is delighted to find himself already socially advantaged by taking, quite literally, a "Room at the top", and this serves as a metaphor for his ambition to better himself and to leave behind any vestige of his former life and acquaintances, many of whom he characterises as "zombies", lacking any trace of genuine life and character. Everything about Warley is an improvement on his former life in Dufton. The Thompsons