William Ashenden

The novel's narrator, Ashenden is a London-based novelist, raised strictly in Blackstable, England, by his uncle, the local Anglican Vicar and his German wife Emily, and later trained as a physician. He appears never to have practiced medicine and as an author is not "in the public eye" as the novel opens. He is puzzled why established author Alroy (Roy) Kear, many of whose novels William has begun to read but few of which he has ever finished, would seek him out after a long absence from his life. After determining that William has no intention of writing about Edward (Ted) Driffield, the "Grand Old Man of English Letters," who has been dead a year, Roy asks if he will turn over any letters from and share reminiscences about the man, as Roy has been commissioned by Ted's widow to write a biography.

William is in a...