I have to declare an interest and I do so with some ambivalence because if the road is dualled it is likely to take half of my front garden.

former Barnies, like me, knew very well that serious students — if they would work their butts off — could probably learn more of what the commercial theatre was really about in a summer at the Barn than they could in all four years

About a year ago I bought 30 Bitcoins, the online peer-to-peer crypto-currency, for about £3 each using a European website called Bitstamp.net. Bitcoins appealed to my inner crypto-anarchist and I felt they had great potential.

And psychically it all happened to Hemingway, who was never a bullfighter (although he tried it), or a prizefighter (although he tried that too), or a one-armed, two-daughtered smuggler of rum and Chinamen (which he apparently never tried at all).