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I was revising Part One of the book. (Part One covers the quarter century from 1895 to 1919.) Soft music drifted up the hall into the white sunny room where I work. I prefer music at a distance when I'm working, so that it comes to you from around corners, like a shy cat. As usual when I am writing, time means nothing. Hours die. 

In the book, the Club is coming out of war and is about to face its first pandemic restrictions (Spanish flu 1918-19). I commenced a new paragraph: 'Armistice Day came, but the battles continued.' As I wrote that sentence, the cat music changed and a different sound floated up the hallway. It was a bugle. It was eleven o'clock.