On March 25, 1920, Paul Scott was born in Palmers Green, England (north London), the second son of Tom and Frances Scott. Tom Scott was a self-employed commercial artist who, together with his two sisters, designed advertisements for the latest fashions. He came from a family of painters and designers while his wife, Frances, was from a more humble background. The family lived on the fringes of middle class respectability and constantly struggled to maintain their position during this period of rigid social mores. Paul maintained high grades while in school but at the age of sixteen had to quit Winchmore Hill Collegiate School in London in order to help the family financially. This was to affect Paul's self-esteem and presented obstacles to his continuing sense of himself as a poet. His father suggested he work as an accountant and he thus apprenticed himself to an accounting firm. He studied in the evenings, completed exams, and rose to more responsibility and more complex duties. The dreamy, creative side could not be ignored, however, and he continued to write poems, read the works of other poets, and developed friendships with other aspiring poets.

In 1940 Scott was drafted to serve in the British Army. In 1941 his poem, had been included in the Resuram Series of poetry pamphlets. While stationed in Torquay, he met Penny Avery, a nurse, at one of the company dances; after a short time they fell in love and were married on October 23, 1941. In February 1943 Scott received orders that he was to be stationed in India, and in March sailed from Liverpool. By the time he arrived it was the beginning of the end for the British Raj in India. He was as surprised at the superior attitude he observed in the British toward their Indian subjects, as he was of the hostile and resentful attitude of the Indian population toward the British, issues Scott was to explore in depth in his later novels. Shortly after his arrival he came down with dysentery which was not diagnosed as amoebiasis until 1964, when it was successfully treated in Paris. The disease had a pronounced effect on Scott during the twenty years in which the parasite remained in his body; it accounted for his mood swings, his irritability, lassitude, and feelings of alienation, and had a marked effect on the style of his writing.

After serving with the British Army in India and Malaya as an air supply officer, Scott returned to London. He had continued to write poetry while in the Army, and though he thought of himself as a poet first, he began to write plays and experienced success with which won a prize in a Jewish playwriting competition. It, and the three other winners, were published in 1948 as Job prospects all over London were bleak at the time of his return but Scott used his training in accounting to secure a position as secretary for the Falcon Press and Grey Walls Press. He left this position in 1950 to become a director and literary agent for Pearn, Pollinger and Higham (later David Higham Associates) where he successfully represented writers such as John Braine, Gerald Hanley, Morris West, M.M. Kaye, Roland Gant, and Chris Almedingen. During those years of encouraging other writers to do their best, he wrote five novels himself but felt torn by the demands of his job and his desire to devote more time to his own writing, and thus resigned in 1960 to work at his craft full time.

Scott's first novel, was rejected seventeen times before being published in 1952, and went on to win the Eyre & Spottiswoode Literary Fellowship Prize. This was followed by published in 1953. India had penetrated Scott's heart deeply; most of his novels are set in India, or use India as a backdrop, as in (1956), (1958), and (1960). Two radio scripts were produced at this time: was broadcast in the summer of 1958, and in 1960. aired on B.B.C. television in London in 1956.

(1962) continued Scott's preoccupation with India, whereas (1963) is set solely in London and explores the importance of work in defining one's role in life and in society. (1964) uses fragments of the life story of a novelist, Edward Thornhill, to piece together the artist's world of the creative imagination in which illusion and fact often vie with each other.

Scott returned to India in 1964 and from that visit came the raw material he needed to write his next five novels, all of which centered on the end of British rule in India. The first four novels, (1966), (1968), (1971), and (1975) comprise The fifth and final novel, (1977), which is a coda to the Raj Quartet, centers on the lives of the British who elected to remain in India after independence. Scott won the Yorkshire Post book of the year award for finest fiction in 1971 for and the Booker Prize in 1977 for Scott taught writing and modern literature at the University of Tulsa in the fall terms of 1976 and 1977. Paul Scott died from cancer on March 1, 1978 in London.