Book Three of The Raj Quartet.
As World War II sweeps convulsively into its last bitter stage, the English wives, daughters, mothers and widows of officers embroiled in the on-going conflict gather in the Indian hill station of Pankot. With their old beliefs and assumptions threatened as never before, they look in vain to Captain Merrick and the British military to uphold the myth of British invincibility in the face of irreversible change.
Writing with enormous wit and compassion, Scott shows both the humour and pathos of the last days of the Raj.