H. Rochester Sneath MA L-ès-L (c. 1900 – ?) is a fictional character, headmaster of the fictional Selhurst school, who was created by Humphrey Berkeley in a series of hoax letters to public school headmasters and public figures starting in 1948. Fictional biography Sneath was the headmaster of Selhurst School ("near Petworth, Sussex"), a preparatory school with 175 male students. Invention of Sneath Selhurst School and Rochester Sneath were the inventions of Humphry Berkeley, then an undergraduate student at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Berkeley ordered headed notepaper printed with Selhurst's letterhead. He arranged with the Royal Mail to have his post forwarded to his Cambridge address. After some time they refused to send mail from a nonexistent address, so he would ask his correspondents to reply c/o his Mrs Harvey-Kelly, at a Cambridge address which was that of a fellow student. The letters Headmasters Berkley's earliest letters as Sneath, written in March 1948, were to the headmasters of several British public schools. The Master of Marlborough College, F. M. Heywood, was livid when Sneath asked how he had "engineered" a recent visit of the royal family. Next, he received a letter in which Sneath warned that he should not hire a French teacher, 'Robert Agincourt', because he had climbed a tree naked. Finally, when asked to recommend a private detective and a competent nursery maid, Heywood wrote back, "I am not an agency for domestic servants. I really must ask you not to bother me with this kind of thing." Other letters included written by Sneath included: A letter to the headmaster of Stowe School to ask if he should provide sex education for the school maids. A complaint to the headmaster of Oundle School that the school chaplain was hopeless as a rat catcher. Asking Haileybury for a reference for a teacher who had a club foot and warts. Even the headmaster of Eton received a letter from Sneath, asking to apply for his job. Some of the headmasters answered politely to a person they thought to be a fellow headmaster; one even recommended Selhurst to a parent of a prospective pupil. Public figures Public figures soon found themselves receiving letters too: George Bernard Shaw received an invitation to speak at an annual celebration at Selhurst; he declined. Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was informed of the possibility of designing a new main building for the school; he declined as