Back in November, during the UK's second lockdown, I put online my novel about travel and tourism – "Egyptian Romance" – since it was the closest I or most people would get to visiting these or any other places. As we enter the third UK lockdown, I thought I'd post the novel I wrote afterwards, about another activity that is now similarly rare and exotic: working in an office.
"Doing the Business" is about the particular social dynamics of the office, specifically within a magazine publishing company. It is even more archaeological, because it describes how magazines were produced before computers. But its main themes are gloire and amour, which I hope will provide a little distraction, just as they have down the centuries...