John Mortimer: Plays One

John Mortimer: Plays One
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2001-09-18
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1849438870

Includes the playsA Voyage Around My Father, The Collaborators, The Dock Brief, Lunch Hour, and What Shall We Tell Caroline? An unsuccessful barrister and even more unsuccessful murderer are the subject of Mortimer’s first play, The Dock Brief. This was followed by What Shall We Tell Caroline? and then Lunch Hour, another short play, about love and lies in the lunch-hour. The Collaborators covers the wear and tear of married life subsequently united by the threat of a third party. A Voyage Round My Father, one of Mortimer’s greatest theatrical successes, is a celebration of the Shakespeare-quoting, eccentric, brave and impossible barrister the author had as a father.

John Mortimer

John Mortimer
Author: Graham Lord
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 475
Release: 2013-12-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466859229

In Britain every generation produces a national treasure, a lovable figure so English that he could not possibly be of any other nationality, and Sir John Mortimer is just such a figure.Mortimer has delighted millions all over the world with seven television series about the gloriously larger-than-life fictional barrister Horace Rumpole --- Rumpole of the Bailey --- as well as novels, autobiographies, stage plays, film scripts, short stories, television and radio plays, newspaper articles, and even an opera and a ballet. Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Alec Guinness appeared in his plays, and among his greatest theatrical triumphs is his stage and television play A Voyage Round My Father. He won a British Book Awards trophy for Lifetime Achievement in 2005.Mortimer actually practiced as a barrister for thirty-six years, defending husbands, wives, pornographers, and murderers in court and starring as the real-life "Devil's Advocate" in several legendary obscenity and blasphemy cases in the 1970s, quickly becoming a liberal hero.Yet despite huge success, fame, and knighthood there lurks beneath that genial "champagne socialist" mask an unusually complex man who has been plagued by depression, doubt, insecurity, and an irresistible urge to commit adultery.Biographer Graham Lord, whose discovery that Mortimer had a secret son by the British actress Wendy Craig forced Sir John to admit it publicly in 2004, has interviewed scores of Mortmer's family, friends, mistresses, and enemies to write a frank and vital biography that reveals the startling reality behind the beloved public figure. "Breathless prose and many juicyrevelations-an absorbing read."--Kirkus Reviews

The First Rumpole Omnibus

The First Rumpole Omnibus
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 700
Release: 1983-09-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 014006768X

Rumpole of the Bailey -- The trials of Rumpole -- Rumpole's return.

Rumpole Misbehaves

Rumpole Misbehaves
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2007-11-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101202556

The next novel in the Rumpole series from the beloved and bestselling master of the court The Rumpole novels have garnered legions of fans who show no sign of abandoning their favorite curmudgeonly British barrister. Now in Rumpole Misbehaves, our hero takes on nothing less than the New Labour government when their ridiculous new Anti- Social Behavior Orders land a Timson child in front of the bench for playing soccer on a posh London street. However, Rumpole quickly discovers that the complainant is hiding some nefarious secrets of her own. As he investigates the murder of a prostitute with links to white slavery and unscrupulous dealings in a government department, Rumpole must also wrangle with his fellow barristers as they threaten him with an ASBO for bringing food, wine, and small cigars into his room in chambers.

Summer's Lease

Summer's Lease
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 289
Release: 1991-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0140158278

The villa near a small Tuscan town is everything the Pargeter family could want for three weeks. But when the idyll turns sour, Molly Pargeter begins to wonder about their mysterious absentee landlord.

In Character

In Character
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 220
Release: 1983
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

The author's interviews in "The Sunday Times" command an enthusiastic following. Using his powers of cross-examination, and his playwright's ear for detail, he talks to such diverse personalities as Graham Greene, Mick Jagger, Enoch Powell and David Hockney.

Paradise Postponed

Paradise Postponed
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2010-11-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141959843

When Simeon Simcox, a socialist clergyman, leaves his entire fortune not to his family but to the ruthless, social-climbing Tory MP Leslie Titmuss, the Rector's two sons react in very different ways. Henry, novelist and former 'angry young man' turned grumpy old reactionary, decides to fight the will and prove their father was insane. Younger brother Fred, a mild-mannered country doctor, takes a different approach, quietly digging in Simeon's past, only to uncover an entirely unexpected explanation for the legacy. An exquisitely drawn saga of ancient rivalries and class struggles, featuring a glorious cast of characters, Paradise Postponed is a delicious portrait of English country life by a master satirist.

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-09-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0241968143

Horace Rumpole - cigar-smoking, claret-drinking, Wordsworth-spouting defender of some unlikely clients - often speaks of the great murder trial which revealed his talents as an advocate and made his reputation down at the Bailey when he was still a young man. Now, for the first time, the sensational story of the Penge Bungalow Murders case is told in full: how, shortly after the war, Rumpole took on the seemingly impossible task of defending young Simon Jerold, accused of murdering his father and his father's friend with a German officer's gun. And how the inexperienced young brief was left alone to pursue the path of justice, in a case that was to echo through the Bailey for years to come.

CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE

CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2010-11-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0141959835

Clinging to the Wreckage is the first part of John Mortimer's acclaimed autobiography. Here he recounts his solitary childhood in the English countryside, with affectionate portraits of his remote parents - an increasingly unconventional barrister father, whose blindness must never be mentioned, battling earwigs in the mutinous garden, and a vague and endlessly patient mother. As a boy dreaming of a tap-dancing career on the stage and forming a one-boy communist cell at boarding school, his father pushes him to pursue the law, where Mortimer embarks on the career that was to inspire his hilarious and immortal literary creations. Told with great humour and touching honesty, this is a magnificent achievement by one of Britain's best-loved writers.

Rumpole Rests His Case

Rumpole Rests His Case
Author: John Mortimer
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2002-07-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0141925558

Rumpole Rests His Case - seven hilarious stories starring John Mortimer's unforgettable barrister The comic, courageous, and corpulent Horace Rumpole reenters the fray in these seven fresh and funny stories in which the "great defender of muddled and sinful humanity" triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness while he tiptoes precariously through the domestic territory of his wife, Hilda-She Who Must Be Obeyed! With his passion for poetry, and a nose equally sensitive to the whiff of wrongdoing and the bouquet of a Château Thames Embankment, the lovable and disheveled Rumpole "is at his rumpled best" (The New York Times). These seven wonderful Rumpole stories will be loved by fans of John Mortimer, as well as readers of Sherlock Holmes, P.D. James and P.G. Wodehouse. 'One of the great comic creations of modern times' Evening Standard 'There is a truth in Rumpole that is told with brilliance and grace' Daily Telegraph 'Rumpole remains and absolute delight' The Times Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional political trilogy of Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.