Edward Hopkins is a middle-aged bachelor, retired from teaching arithmetic to breed poultry in the English countryside. He gardens, he is vainglorious about his prize-winning chickens, and he is a regular attendee at meetings of the British Lunar Society. He is also an arrogant snob, utterly self-absorbed and lacking in self-awareness. He tells us he has a ‘gift for friendship’ and a ‘restful, pleasant personality’. Among his neighbours he has ‘selected’ two gentlemen, with whom he has spent happy evenings ‘discussing my poultry until long past midnight . . . It was a great regret to me when both of them decided to go and live farther away.’ Oh, I thought, this is going to be good.