# Cakes and Ale — Character guide

> Key figures in Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham.

- [The Narrator](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/unknown_narrator.md): He narrates from the vantage of middle-aged success, but the book's real subject is his younger self: a medical student and aspiring writer drifting between Blackstable and bohemian London. He is observant, self-deprecat
- [Roy Kear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/roy_kear.md): Kear is everything the narrator is not: clubman, self-promoter, and tireless cultivator of useful friendships. Over veal-and-ham pie and famous club brandy he works his way toward a request—a biography of Driffield, shap
- [Rosie Driffield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/rosie_driffield.md): Rosie moves through Blackstable and London with a placid good nature that conceals appetites others find scandalous. She devours histories of queens and royal mistresses, loves the smoky hominess of the Canterbury music 
- [Edward Driffield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/edward_driffield.md): When the narrator first meets him, Driffield is a modest, half-forgotten author of some twenty books, admired by a small circle and patronized by the ambitious Mrs. Barton Trafford. He is quiet, observant, and oddly deta
- [Mrs. Barton Trafford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/mrs_barton_trafford.md): Small, boneless, dressed in discreet black silk with jangling beads, she glides through Chelsea drawing rooms dispensing patronage and quiet judgments. She is genuinely kind in manner and entirely strategic in effect, an
- [Lord George Kemp](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/lord_george_kemp.md): Kemp belongs to the world of provincial ambition and quiet money—the kind of man Blackstable respects and the narrator's circle would dismiss. His affair with Rosie is the scandal that ends her marriage to Driffield and 
- [Mary-Ann](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/mary_ann.md): The narrator's aunt's maid at Blackstable, a childhood acquaintance.
- [Mrs. Hudson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/mrs_hudson.md): The narrator's aunt's cook-housekeeper in Blackstable.
- [Old Mr. Driffield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/old_driffield.md): Edward Driffield's father, a farmer in Blackstable.
- [Harry Retford](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/harry_retford.md): A friend of the narrator's youth, a cheerful, improvident man.
- [Quentin Forde](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/quentin_forde.md): A young man who was a friend of the Driffields in London.
- [Amelia Driffield](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/amelia_driffield.md): Amelia Driffield presides over her famous husband's late years as gatekeeper, nurse, and self-appointed curator of his reputation, keeping bohemian old friends and inconvenient memories at a careful distance. Her respect
- [Mr. Galloway](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/mr_galloway.md): The vicar of Blackstable, a kind and scholarly man.
- [Lionel Hillier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters/lionel_hillier.md): A literary critic and friend of the narrator.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/cakes_and_ale_se/characters