Nigel Pantling was a soldier in Northern Ireland during the early years of The Troubles, private secretary to Ministers in the Home Office during the most turbulent year of the Thatcher Government, and a merchant banker in the 90 s when privatisations and mergers and acquisitions were rampant. He now advises chief executives of companies on strategy. His writing in Kingdom Power Glory draws on the danger, the absurdity and the human frailty that he has seen at first hand. 'The toad work - as Larkin put it - squats on our lives. Yet there are few novels of the workplace, and even fewer books...