Anthony Powell
As it happens, two of the books I most enjoyed this year are about India: Hilary Spurling's Paul Scott: A Life (Hutchinson, £18.99) and V. S. Naipaul's India: A Million Mutinies Now (Heinemann, £17.50). Paul Scott, an uncomfortable figure, sexually enigmatic, I found fascinat- ing to read about as described by the sensitive hand of Hilary Spurling, even apart from the merits of The Raj Quartet; perhaps debatable as a novel, but fully realised as televison. Naipaul's India is long, detailed, narrated in his own peculiar manner of countless interviews with every sort of individual. Paul Scott spent his army service in India, fell in love with the subcontinent, wrote about the coming of Independence. Naipaul's study shows how naive politically, socially, ethnically, were Scott's views, or indeed those of most other Europeans where modern India is concerned. My third choice is Anthony Beevor's Inside the British Army (Chatto, £17.50). Beevor not only crams an enor- mous amount of interesting and relevant information about the contemporary army into a reasonably sized book, but also manages to be funny, at times moving, at appropriate moments.
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