Scott stated, "For me, the British Raj is an extended metaphor I don't think a writer chooses his metaphors. They choose him." From his earliest experiences in North London, he felt himself an outsider in his own country. As his biographer comments, 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. However Scott saw things other people would sooner not see, and he looked too close for comfort. His was a bleak, stern, prophetic vision and, like E. M. Forster's, it has come to seem steadily more accurate with time.