The idea of a public place suggests an environment in which propriety is maintained and the boundaries of appropriate behaviour are respected. However, in the writing featured in this month's focus, which takes as its theme the idea of Public Space, those boundaries are stretched, but in a restrained and private way which cleverly and subtly reveals the personal dramas taking place beneath an apparently calm surface.

Richard Beard's short story, 'Hearing Myself Think', is a carefully measured account of a man's search for himself as he ponders the coming and going of travellers at Heathrow Airport. It is a disquieting and compulsive story that draws readers deep into the man's psyche as we witness a mind unravelling.

Doris Lessing's piece 'In the National Gallery' is a subtle, touching, funny and tense account of the dynamics that unfold between other viewers as she attempts to focus on a painting by Stubbs. Full of insight into the human condition, Lessing's meditation on the lives of others is both profound and engaging.

Richard Beard

Richard Beard is the author of four novels, most recently Dry Bones (Secker), and two sports-travel books with Yellow Jersey Press. He lives in Strasbourg.

Photograph: Charles Glover

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing was born in 1919 in Persia, now Iran. She grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and arrived in England in 1949. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing, was published in 1950. She is now regarded as one of the most important post-war writers in English. A Companion of Honour and a Companion of Literature, she has been awarded the David Cohen Memorial Prize for British Literature and Spain's Prince of Asturias Prize, as well as a host of other prestigious international awards. She has been short-listed for the Booker Prize three times and was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize 2005. Her most recent novel, The Cleft, was published by Fourth Estate in 2007. She lives in London.

Photograph: Chris Saunders

Illustration © Maurizio Marmorato