The great American writer Jack Kerouac would have turned 100 next March. Those familiar with his cavalier lifestyle might not be surprised to learn he never made it to such a ripe old age, or even halfway there. He was a prodigious creator during his lifetime though, no more so than the period when he wrote his magnum opus, On The Road.

In a drug-fuelled literary rampage, Kerouac hammered out his seminal novel in just three weeks, a feat achieved by an almost non-stop typing on a single 120-foot roll of paper. Or so the legend goes.