This paper treats the steady three-dimensional thermocapillary convection in a cylindrical liquid-metal zone between the isothermal ends of two coaxial solid cylinders and surrounded by an atmosphere. There is a uniform steady magnetic field which is parallel to the common centrelines of the liquid zone and solid cylinders, and there is a non-axisymmetric heat flux into the liquid's free surface. The magnetic field is sufficiently strong that inertial effects and convective heat transfer are negligible, and that viscous effects are confined to thin boundary layers adjacent to the free surface and to the liquid–solid interfaces. With an axisymmetric heat flux, the axisymmetric thermocapillary convection is confined to the thin layer adjacent to the free surface, but with a non-axisymmetric heat flux, there is an azimuthal flow inside the free-surface layer from the hot spot to the cold spot with the circulation completed by flow across the inviscid central core region. This problem is related to the magnetic damping of thermocapillary convection for the floating-zone growth of semiconductor crystals in Space.