Humphry John Berkeley (21 February 192614 November 1994) was a British politician and author. He was noted for his three changes of parties and his early support for gay rights. He is also remembered for a series of hoax letters he sent as fictional headmaster "H. Rochester Sneath" while an undergraduate, and later published as The Life and Death of Rochester Sneath. Background and early life He was born on 21 February 1926, at Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Berkeley's father, Reginald, was Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham Central from 1922 to 1924 and a noted playwright. Humphry Berkeley attended Malvern College followed by Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was President of both the Cambridge Union Society and Cambridge University Conservative Association in 1948. H. Rochester Sneath Berkeley's studies were interrupted when he was excluded ('sent down') for two years as a result of a practical joke in which he impersonated 'H. Rochester Sneath', the fictional headmaster of a rather odd public school, and wrote hoax letters to public figures. Berkeley knew Rab Butler, who arranged a job for him at Conservative Central Office during this time; he also advised him to keep the hoax letters and their replies safely, and publish them a quarter of a century later. The 'Rochester Sneath letters' were duly published in 1974. Career Berkeley established his own public relations company and became head of publicity and public relations for a group of civil engineering companies. As a strong supporter of European union, he was Director-General of the United Kingdom Council of the European Movement in 1956–1957. In the 1959 general election he was elected as a Conservative MP for Lancaster. Berkeley was a strong internationalist who supported the work of the United Nations; his father had supported the League of Nations. He served on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union and the Council of Europe from 1963. On the socially liberal wing of his party, Berkeley was a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform and from 1965 the honorary Treasurer. That year he also drew up the new rules for election of the Leader of the Conservative Party. When he won second place in the ballot for Private Member's Bills in 1965, Berkeley decided to introduce a bill to legalise male homosexual relations along the lines of the Wolfenden report. Indeed, according to a 2007 article published in The Observer, Berkeley was