well. Conductor Sir Adrian Boult was invited to conduct the school orchestra; he, like Shaw and Scott, was not enthusiastic. Two of Sneath's correspondents detected the hoax: one was Walter Oakeshott of Winchester College, who declined an invitation because he was attending a commemoration of a remote ancestor at Salt Lake City, Utah. The other was John Sinnott, rector of Beaumont College. When invited to lead an exorcism, Sinnott requested a packet of salt "capable of being taken up in pinches" be ready for him. Exposure On 13 April 1948, Sneath's letter was published in the Daily Worker, complaining of the difficulty in importing Russian textbooks for compulsory Russian lessons in his school. The News Review asked to interview Sneath to discover more about this unusual school, but Sneath's "secretary", "Penelope Pox-Rhyddene", claimed he was ill. The journalist then visited Petworth to discover that there was no Selhurst School there, and subsequently turned up on the doorstep of Berkeley's friend's lodgings. A story in the News Review on 29 April revealed that Berkeley was behind the hoax. Berkeley was sent down (excluded from university) for two years. After Sneath, and publication Berkeley was later elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Lancaster in the 1959 general election. The Rochester Sneath letters were published in 1974 under the title The Life and Death of Rochester Sneath, together with drawings by Nicolas Bentley. Books Nonexistent people used in hoaxes Fictional principals and headteachers Hoaxes in the United Kingdom 1948 in the United Kingdom 1940s hoaxes