Crossing the floor

Berkeley, Humphry

Allen& Unwin

Life and Death of Rochester Sneath: A Youthful Frivolity

Literature & Fiction

David & Charles Publishers

The life and death of Rochester Sneath: A youthful frivolity

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Davis-Poynter

Crossing the Floor (Routledge Revivals)

Legal Theory & Systems

Routledge

The Myth That Will Not Die (Routledge Revivals)

Originally published in 1968, the theme of this book is the decline of the influence of the House of Commons in general and the rise in particular in the power of the Prime Minister. The author looks behind the myths of how our constitution operates to describe what was actually happening in practice in the 2nd half of the 20th Century. The book highlights the way in which the Commons was failing to check and control the executive. It also makes valuable suggestions (which have since been adopted) to set up specialist committees, to consider the principal political issues of the day and how the House of Lords might be reformed.

The Power of the Prime Minister (Routledge Revivals)

H. Rochester Sneath no longer exists. And if you wished to put your son's name on the waiting list for Selhurst School, near Petworth, Sussex, you might have a little difficulty. It doesn't exist either. But, as this collection of Sneath's letters, and the replies, proves, you can fool most of the people most of the time. Particularly, it seems, if the people happen to be the head masters of thos emost English private institutions - public schools.In early 1948 Sneath began his brief and glorious career. Letters, like canes, mortarboards and jaundiced rugger balls, began to appear in headmasters' offices, whose occupants, with two notable exceptions, appeared to find nothing strange in Sneath's requests or his exhortations. Pompous, indignant, eccentric, pushing, toadying, or just plain dotty, the letters were answered with a seriousness which is barely credible. For he wrote of:- infestations of rats- the possibility of 'engineering' Royal visits- how to hire a private detective- junior masters with club feet and warty noses- ghosts, cricket, statues, new buildings, 'monster' reunionsGeorge Bernard Shaw was puzzled, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was booked up, as was Sir Adrian Boult. Sir William Reid Dick was eager. After four or five letters the Master of Marlborough becaqme exasperated, while the head master of St Benedict's was livid. A certain master displayed a cupidity not normally associated with men of the cloth; the new Master of Rugby was grateful for some wise advice; the head master of Stowe could not have been more helpful about sex. There was talk of Sneath succeeding the hea dmaster of Eton. One head master was so drawn to Sneath that he recommended Selhurst to a prospective parent, who promptly applied for a place on behalf of her son. His name was placed on 'the waiting list for the Waiting List'.Sneath's letters comprise a gentle and unmalicious, but devastatingly accurate parody of the public school system - a collection so intelligently absurd that it defies adequate description.

The Life and Death of Rochester Sneath

Biographies & Memoirs

Harriman House

The Life and Death of Rochester Sneath: The outrageously funny real-life pranks that fooled the public schools of England

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