Long before the tenor Alfie Boe was performing at the Royal Albert Hall, he was bedding down on a park bench over the road in Hyde Park. The plan to become a professional singer wasn’t going well: a student at the Royal College of Music, he was broke, homeless and sleeping rough. “I knew what it was like, sleeping in the open,” Boe says. “I had the sleeping bag, I knew how to get comfortable and — this is the main thing — it didn’t scare me. I thought: ‘I’m going to make this work, college in the day, sleep rough at night.’

Source: The Times December 26, 2021 11:46 UTC