Hello and welcome to The Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we ask a handful of writers to read their pieces from the magazine aloud.

This week we have Lloyd Evans, arguing that the state should stop subsidising

the National Theatre and start funding Britain's bingo halls. Then we have Lionel Shriver on the

difficulties of taking back control. And finally, Will Heaven on the dissolution of the

Downside Monastery.

First up, Lloyd Evans.

For nearly six months, our subsidised playhouses, notably the National Theatre, have been dark.

What have we missed? Not much. Some would say nothing at all.

And this has come as a surprise to those of us who

were led to believe that the subsidised theatre is critical to the national conversation.

It turns out that the nation can happily debate political and social issues without the help of playwrights or actors.

Perhaps it's time to re-examine our state-funded theatres and the reasons we

support them. The National Theatre was set up in 1963, soon after the establishment of the Royal

Shakespeare Company in 1961, and both received funding from the Arts Council, which was founded in

1946. The leaders of these august bodies had a

particular reverence for drama, opera, ballet and orchestral music, and they assumed, perhaps

a little arrogantly, that their preferences were a force for good and that culture could improve

humanity. That theory is still active today.

The website of the beleaguered old Vic proclaims that every time a theatre closes, we lose a chance

to make the world better. But is there any evidence for this commonly held belief? What role did

the theatre play in the development of the bicycle,

...