Product Description
A second volume of autobiography following on from "Clinging to the Wreckage". Extending the story, Mortimer tells of his court work and his breakthrough to fame with Rumpole and "Brideshead". Portraits of Tony Hillerman, David Niven, John Geilgud, Harold Wilson and others are included. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"All fiction, plays...parables, myths, and religion are our attempt to provide an explanation for haphazard events in our lives"
The second of John Mortimer's three autobiographies, this installment covers his life from the 1960s through 1980s, when he retired from the law following a case which took him to Singapore.The son of a barrister who specialized in divorces and contested wills, Mortimer, who was extremely close to his father, shared his father's practice, eventually taking over when his father, blind, retired from the bar.During all this time, Mortimer also wrote plays, novels, screenplays, and stories, and in 1963, he admits, he almost left the law, in favor of writing.

When he became a QC, he began accepting cases which were not purely domestic, and he tried his first murder case, a case which found its way into his immensely popular "Rumpole for the Defense" series, which he began writing in 1975.He had already written A Voyage Round My Father, which had become a successful stage play, and he memorialized his father once again as the model for Rumpole, the irascible and iconoclastic barrister who delights in challenging the status quo.According to Mortimer, the two characters are so similar that he has difficulty remembering which of Rumpole's characteristics, if any, are purely Rumpole's and which are his father's.

A supporter of the Socialists and Labor, and an atheist who says he nevertheless respects Christianity as the basis of British culture, Mortimer devotes considerable time here to describing political movements and Thatcherism during this period.His friendships with David Niven, Sir John Gielgud, Harold Pinter, and other literary and theatrical lights are fully described, and his experiences in Russia, when he and a group tried to film Shakespeare there are memorable.The final section of the book involves an extended trip to South Africa to meet his father's family and explore his roots.

Lovers of Mortimer's novels and of the Rumpole series will find Mortimer's own life fascinating, especially when real cases are described and the reader recognizes how these are used in the Rumpole series.The book is like a travelogue, however, moving from point to point with no real sense of thematic unity or direction.Mortimer himself addresses this issue in his conclusion, saying that to impose a theme, which would provide unity and coherence, would be the equivalent of inventing a myth to impose order on life.While this is a fine sentiment, it does lead to a somewhat disjointed book--amusing and interesting, but lacking conclusions which might make it more meaningful for the reader.nMary Whipple

The Summer of a Dormouse
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels) ... Read more

Product Description
In this hilarious and touching autobiography, the bestselling author of Paradise Postponed and the Rumpole series continues the story he began in the popular Clinging to the Wreckage. Former barrister, screen writer, and novelist John Mortimer tells the story of the second half of his life and of the strangely assorted characters who enriched it. "A brilliant summing up."--Boston Sunday Globe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

"All fiction, plays...parables, myths, and religion are our attempt to provide an explanation for haphazard events in our lives"
The second of British author John Mortimer's three autobiographies, this installment covers his life from the 1960s through 1980s, when he retired from the law following a case which took him to Singapore. The son of a barrister who specialized in divorces and contested wills, Mortimer, who was extremely close to his father, shared his father's practice, eventually taking over when his father, blind, retired from the bar. During all this time, Mortimer also wrote plays, novels, screenplays, and stories, and in 1963, he admits, he almost left the law, in favor of writing.

When he became a QC, he began accepting cases which were not purely domestic, and he tried his first murder case, a case which found its way into his immensely popular Rumpole of the Bailey series, which he began writing in 1975. He had already written A Voyage Round My Father, which had become a successful stage play, and he memorialized his father once again as the model for Rumpole, the irascible and iconoclastic barrister who delights in challenging the status quo. According to Mortimer, the two characters are so similar that he has difficulty remembering which of Rumpole's characteristics, if any, are purely Rumpole's and which are his father's.

A supporter of the Socialists and Labor, and an atheist who says he nevertheless respects Christianity as the basis of British culture, Mortimer devotes considerable time here to describing political movements and Thatcherism during this period. His friendships with David Niven, Sir John Gielgud, Harold Pinter, and other literary and theatrical lights are fully described, and his experiences in Russia, when he and a group tried to film Shakespeare there are memorable. The final section of the book involves an extended trip to South Africa to meet his father's family and explore his roots.

Lovers of Mortimer's novels and of the Rumpole series will find Mortimer's own life fascinating, especially when real cases are described and the reader recognizes how these are used in the Rumpole series. The book is like a travelogue, however, moving from point to point with no real sense of thematic unity or direction. Mortimer himself addresses this issue in his conclusion, saying that to impose a theme, which would provide unity and coherence, would be the equivalent of inventing a myth to impose order on life. While this is a fine sentiment, it does lead to a somewhat disjointed book--amusing and interesting, but lacking conclusions which might make it more meaningful for the reader.Mary Whipple

The Summer of a Dormouse
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels)

Not Rumpole
The second autobiography wasn't as good as the first. Much repetition of the first but with much weaker writing. He tries too hard in this book to look more admirable than he probably is.

The Man just can't write a bad book!
I finally got around to read about the creator of that lovable Old Bailey hack - Rumpole. I was not disappointed.

The story continues....
In CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE, John Mortimer covered his childhood and young adulthood, marriage to his first wife Penelope and the family of six children, and his entry into British Law as a Queen's Counsel (QC).He only tangentially wrote about his literary accomplishments including his books SUMMER'S LEASE, the RUMPOLE series, and the Titmuss Trilogy, and his work as a screen writer on various plays including BRIDESHEAD REVISITED.

In MURDERERS AND OTHER FRIENDS Mortimer continues the saga of his life with tales from his days as a QC defending an assortment of clients from Sex Pistols to serial killers, tales of his work with the Labor Party, anectdotes about his marriage to wife Penny (#2), and an in-depth look behind the scenes at the creative process that led to his various artistic triumps including the creation of Rumpole of the Bailey.

It doesn't take too much imagination to see that Mortimer is Rumpole (except for the kids, he acquires two more in this book bringing the total to eight). It seems those tales we've read in the Rumpole series are based on real stories. The problem Mortimer says, is that he has had to tone down the real tales to make them believable as fiction. For example, in one of the Rumpole tales, a man is accused of attacking his wife because she made him sit next to the taps when they took their bath together. In the real case, he did not merely attack her, he killed her.

Mortimer also shares "behind the scenes" stories about his other creative efforts.He tells of his first encounter with Lawrence Olivier and how Olivier came to play the father in two of his productions, TRAVELS ROUND MY FATHER and BRIDESHEAD REVISITED.He tells of seeing the fabulous John Gielgud on stage as a child, then having him play an aging journalist in SUMMER'S LEASE.He tells of his friendships with David Niven and Rex Harrison and their rivalry. He shares anectdotes about other famous friends and their children.Some of those famous children include Emma Thompson and Natasha Richardson.

As a playwright and author, Mortimer has mingled with the cream of the British artistic world, and but this is not an expose of his friends and acquaintences--unless they are conservative members of Parliament, murderers, or other degenerates.

All of Mortimer's tales are told with humor, but occasionally, a sad note creeps in.It is impossible to reach the age of 83 and not have had at least a few sad moments.What Mortimer is able to do however, is find a way to keep the reader smiling at the foibles of human beings including himself.This is a very funny book and I recommend it to anyone who is fan of BBC/PBS productions. ... Read more

Product Description
A woman takes her husband and children to the Italian home of another English family accompanied by her eccentric father. A sense of foreboding hangs over the holiday from the start as the house, as well as its absentee owners, exert their presence. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"I don't suppose you have ever killed anyone, have you?"
When Molly Pargeter and her family--her husband, father, and three daughters--take a summer lease for La Felicita, an ironically named Tuscan villa in Mondano, Italy, she is curious about the owners.The owners have, after all, specified that they prefer a married couple with three children, preferably all girls, though Molly can't imagine why.The house comes with instructions and both a supervisor ("Mr. Fixit") and a housekeeper, both of whom Molly finds mysterious, and when the water disappears from the swimming pool and has to be replaced at exorbitant cost, she begins to wonder who has the water "concession" for the area.

Asthe family works its way into the society of other expatriates and Italian gentry in"Chianti-shire," the reader learns that Molly's husband may be unfaithful, that her father still regards himself as a great roué who hopes to make connections with a now-wealthy former flame, and that the local residents seem determined to prevent her from finding out information about the Ketterings, her landlords.With too little to do and an immense curiosity, Molly determines to find out all the secrets.The death of Mr. Fixit, found dead in an empty swimming pool, adds a sense of mystery, and Molly's discoveries about the Ketterings convince her even more strongly that there are hidden crimes behind the seemingly innocent façade of Mondano.

John Mortimer's wry satire of British life and society combines with his ironic humor as he shows Molly to be a meddlesome, if well-intentioned, woman. His insight into the contrasts between her British mores and those of her Italian neighbors adds color to the novel and shows the Italians to be far more pragmatic than the overly "polite" society of the expatriates.The questions about the death of Mr. Fixit and the disappearance of Mr. Kettering grow, and Molly's pursuit of answers to questions which are none of her business leads to a dramatic, if somewhatenigmatic conclusion.

Molly and her family are not characters the reader cares much about, however, and this novel does not achieve the level of black humor which readers have come to expect from Mortimer.Light, satiric, and filled with local color, it is fun to read, however, and the conclusion may keep the reader pondering beyond the end of the novel. n Mary Whipple

The Summer of a Dormouse
Felix in the Underworld
Murderers and Other Friends
Rumpole's Return
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (Penguin Celebrations)

COMPLEX, PLENTY OF LOCAL COLOR
The Amazon.com synopsis does not do justice to this book by wonderful writer John Mortimer. If you have been to Tuscany, or merely wish you had, the details of the Tuscan landscape and the villa La Felicitamake you drool with envy.The family members are all vividly characterized - you can only wonder how the grandfather has avoided being the victim of ahomicide during his 77 years, You are halfway through the novel before you realize that although you sympathize with Molly, the heroine, you don't particularily like her - and why is that, I wonder?Sorry to have finished the book- it will be difficult to find another novel which so neatly captures the Ex-Patriate British scene in Italy - and a mystery to boot! ... Read more

Product Description
Set in London, this book is the sinister tale of a middle-aged solicitor and his hopeless attempts, both spiritual and real, to find his son and that son's search for his father. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not Mortimer's Best
I suspect that if the late John Mortimer is remembered for anything, at least in the literary line, it will be as the creator of the eccentric barrister Horace Rumpole, and even Rumpole's fame perhaps owes as much to Leo McKern, who played the role on television, as it does to his creator. Mortimer, however, wrote many other novels, most of which, especially those from the early part of his career, are now out of print.

"Like Men Betrayed", which I recently came across in a second-hand bookshop, is one of these. (The title, a quotation from Wordsworth, has also been used by another modern British author, Frederic Raphael). It was Mortimer's fourth novel, originally published in 1953, and is set partly in London, partly in the Midlands village of Worsfold. The main London characters are an outwardly respectable solicitor, Christopher Kennet, and his mysterious, shady son Kit; the main rural ones are the Hume-Monument family, Worsfold's local members of the shabby-genteel hunting, shooting and fishing squirearchy.

The plot turns upon a complicated scheme by Kennet to misuse monies entrusted to him by Mrs Hume-Monument, the matriarch of the family and a client of his firm, to finance an illegal arms deal being put together by Kit, although for much of the novel we merely have a vague sense that something improper is afoot, the precise details of this impropriety remaining obscure. Only towards the end do we learn exactly what father and son are up to, and even then the details of their scheme are not very interesting. Mortimer never really enlightens us as to exactly why a wealthy and respected pillar of the Establishment should have got involved in such a desperate, murky affair. The main reason seems to be Kennet's belief in the pointlessness of existence, which has led him into moral nihilism.

This was not a book I really enjoyed, for a number of reasons, of which the uncertainty surrounding the motivations of its major characters was only one. (Kit is even harder to fathom than his father). There were too many uninteresting minor characters, who flitted in and out of the story without playing any definite part in it, and Mortimer's attempts at satire are often heavy-handed, particularly where his rustic characters are concerned. To mention incest (which is, according to metropolitan sophisticates, the perversion of choice in Britain's rural communities) within a few lines of starting to write about country matters is generally the sign of a sledgehammer wit.

On the other side of the account, there are occasionally some deft verbal touches; I liked, for example, Mortimer's comparison of Kennet's unhappy marriage to a Cold War in which "no peace offer, however desperate or sincere, is ever regarded without suspicion and contempt, but in which both realise that neither side still have the courage, or the strength, or the stupidity to join battle in earnest". On the whole, however, I found this a rather dull and uninteresting book, inferior in quality to some of Mortimer's later work such as "Paradise Postponed" and some of the Rumpole stories. The neglect into which it has fallen in perhaps not undeserved.
... Read more

Product Description
A collection of crime stories by authors including John Mortimer, Ellis Peters, Charlotte Armstrong, Ralph McInerny and G.K. Chesterton. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1879.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Wonderful!
Rumpole stories are like getting in touch with old friends after you've read a few of them.There is no ficitional character like the curmudgeonly Old Bailey hack, and we get to see him in six more wonderful stories in this book.The stories are, of course, all excellent, but I always pick a favourite and in this one it's "Rumpole and the Female of the Species".Rumpole's dry wit and acerbic tongue is at its best in this story as he is defending one of his old Timson gang of criminals, as well as trying to get a young female barrister accepted into Chambers.These stories never get stale, and they are all little gems in their own right.I highly recomeend that those who love to read and to laugh read Mortimer's long selection of stories about Horace Rumpole.

Like listening to an old friend
I wish that these stories had been narrated by Leo McKern; after all, John Mortimer wrote his Rumpole stories with McKern in mind.But if he wasn't available to narrate them, then Patrick Tull is a more than adequate substitute (which brings up the question:who on earth is Bill Wallis?The Recorded Books version that I rented doesn't mention anyone by that name.).

Tull does a great job of imitating the gruff-but-lovable Horace Rumpole, the barrister who makes courtroom dramas fun.I had not visited the Temple in quite a while, and it was good to reacquaint myself with both Erskine-Browns, Uncle Tom, and Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., among others.If Patrick Tull is the narrator for any other Rumpole books I'd listen to them anytime.

Golden Laughter in This Great Golden Book
Mortimer is a genius at writing because he makes Rumpole so real and memorable.And, how could anyone forget his wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed?My father, a lawyer, introduced me to Rumpole when it was a series on tv.I loved the TV Rumpole, but the books are even better!If you want a humorous, entertaining, delightful book about the English barristers and courts, this book is the right one.I loved this book and want more just like it!

Pure Joy
Another great read about the skill, wit, caustic and irreverant QC, his bumbling confreres, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and a strong statement on English society. ... Read more