Cambridge holds a very special place in my heart because it’s where I met the love of my life. I’d just done a very bad audition for Footlights, which he, fortunately, missed because, true to form as I subsequently discovered, he was running late. We were introduced at the party afterwards and we’ve been together ever since. It’s inevitable therefore that at some point I’d want to write about Cambridge, and that Cambridge theatricals would be central to my story. I myself was once Bianca the Whore in a production of Othello at Queens college, the first in a long line of whores that I seemed destined to play. On stage, of course.

When I embarked on Green Eye (hardback December 2006), I decided it would be best to invent a Cambridge college, since that way I’d be less likely to fall foul of any outraged academics. Anyway, it’s much more fun to create your own institution. Makes you feel gloriously omnipotent.

It’s Iago who refers to the green-eyed monster, jealousy. Shakespeare is, as usual, spot on when he portrays jealousy as a monster since it’s the most damaging and corrosive of the emotions -- and potentially the most destructive. And in the hot-house atmosphere of a Cambridge college, full of people whose emotional literacy doesn’t necessarily match their big brains, where the rest of the world is a distant dream, where intrigue, gossip and rivalry are rife, and where relationships can take on a fearsome intensity, tragedy is often only a step away. As you will discover if you read GREEN EYE.