If you wanted to be, say, a Prime Minister, you would perhaps hold your career goal ahead of you like a beacon before setting off on the campaign trail and a world of canvassing and aiding assisting, before you arrived home and dry upon your policy-shaped podium, stroking your fat white Persian cat and spinning around riotously in your swivel chair.

Much of what I have found from my time in Vintage publicity has been an early launch into a dream department; feet dangling off the edge of the swivel chair, Persian kitten, etc. Having left university I presumed this sort of experience a distant mirage: working at Random House at a desk that is difficult to leave at the end of the day. But a little perspective here: week one just so happened to be the week that books one and two of Murakami’s 1Q84 series books one and two, were published, and Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize. To see an author, and his publishing team, gain such an accolade is really a very special thing to witness for anyone working in the industry. What a first week! Surely it can’t always be like this.

Now approaching the end of my second week the drama creeps in – my fingers hesitant over the keyboard, unbelieving and firmly in denial – O, that it might end?! Because I get the impression that, celebrations aside, it sort of is always like this. Friendly and crucially un-patronising people welcome you to your role, and your work varies from the methodical mail-outs to helping at events, writing press releases and you may even converse with the very authors you so admire (Me: ‘Congratulations!’; Julian Barnes: ‘Thank you’). So the glad undertaking of a role in a welcoming and kind team comes as standard, but the Booker prize celebrations are the icing on the proverbial...

Embedded in this post is a sort of ‘thank you’, although I’d rather spare you the gushing appreciation that I will be giving the girls when I leave. I have had a fantastic – the most fantastic – experience here in the publicity department at Vintage, and soon this ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ dream will come to an end and I shall sadly be returning to the dreaded canvassing (kept happy by the memories and the fortune of the last two weeks).

Ella Bowman, Publicity Work Experience