A trip to any bookshop these days is a bewildering experience, and so I tend to treasure worthwhile recommendations and pass them on. In a recent programme on the BBC, Sebastian Faulks mentioned The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott. This roman fleuve was very popular about a quarter of a century ago, when it was televised as The Jewel in the Crown, but it is a wonderful read even today, as I am finding, discovering it for the first time. Scott’s theme is the decline of empire – the novels are set in India during the twilight of British rule, the early 1940s. Scott does not shy away from big themes, unlike so many of our contemporaries. Susan and Sarah Layton are two sisters who have been brought up as children of the Raj. They sense the fin de siècle atmosphere that hangs over them.