ALLIANCE Trust's almost entirely new board of directors was put on the spot at last week's annual meeting in Dundee. Following a shareholder challenge, each in turn was asked by chairman Lord Smith to explain why they had any relevance to the trust and why they were on the board. First to speak, star fund manager Karl Sternberg had his story ready. "My surname is Sternberg but my mother's name is Galbraith. She owns a lot of Alliance Trust shares, so she has been very annoyed for some time. So I'm doing this because my mum told me to."

EDINBURGH auction house Bonhams is holding its twice yearly sporting sale on Monday, with plenty to please pursuers of huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. Among the sale highlights are two rare sporting books. The Stalking Journal of Major General Henry Hope Crealock, estimated at £35,000-50,000, records Crealock’s stalking adventures in the Highlands in the 19th century. The Major General enjoyed a distinguished military career – his campaigns included the Siege of Sebastapol – and was also a well-regarded amateur artist. A first edition of William Jardine’s British Salmonidae, with an album of Jardine’s original sketches, is estimated at £25,000-35,000. Jardine was a famous Scottish naturalist who came from Applegirth, Dumfriesshire and is best known for his Naturalist's Library. The sale also includes three silver gilt replica Ryder Cups estimated at £7,000-10,000 each.

THIS week’s Eurovision song contest finals in Sweden have fuelled a big leap in accommodation searches by fans, according to Hotels.com.

The booking site says Brits and Italians heading to Stockholm for the finals between 9 and 14 May are the competition’s biggest fans. “Brits aren't being bashful in showing their support for our representatives, pop sensations Joe and Jake, with an increase just under 340 per cent in searches for Stockholm accommodation in the last three months,” the company says. “On the back of their stint on The Voice UK in 2015, Joe and Jake are striving for the top spot, and the nation is clearly behind them.” Meanwhile searches from Italy are up by almost 440 per cent as Italians support for their contestant, Francesca Michielin. So that’s ‘douze points’ for Sweden.

SHAKESPEARE’S Globe theatre is collaborating with Twitter to produce the complete works of the bard using real time tweets. Using a ‘Word by Word’ typewriter developed in association with London-based digital product studio Pixie Labs, the project will source its words from tweets sent out in real time.

As a tweet appears somewhere in the world containing the next word, the tweeting typewriter will type it – until the complete works, including all 37 plays and 154 sonnets, have been gradually revealed. Where there are pauses in the global chatter, people are invited to fill these by tweeting the playwright themselves, using the hashtag #TheCompleteTweets. As Shakespeare would say: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't."