Child's play

City firm Macfarlanes is struggling to come to terms with news that solicitor Geoff Steward has written a children's book (see [2000] Gazette, 14 September, 14), and staff have turned to humour as a way to cope with the shock that one of their number has an imagination.

And it just cannot get over the name of the book, The Lost Grandad.

His colleagues 'tend to dash off definitive tomes with snappy titles such as Pensions and Trusteeship and The Construction Law Handbook', a statement rushed to us said.

The title is not believed to be a reference to former senior partner Vanni Treves, who now has several outside roles, the firm added.

Current senior partner Robert Sutton weighed in: 'The title, of course, subtly evokes Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, but Geoff's book is a lot shorter.'