cover image A Voyage Round John Mortimer: The Biography of the Creator of Rumpole of the Bailey

A Voyage Round John Mortimer: The Biography of the Creator of Rumpole of the Bailey

Valerie Grove, . . Viking, $27.95 (542pp) ISBN 978-0-670-01880-2

According to London Times reporter Grove (The Compleat Woman ), the creator of the loud and lovable fictional barrister Rumpole and the screenwriter for the television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited is himself a flamboyant barrister, prolific writer and compulsive womanizer. John Mortimer's complex personal life includes expulsion from Oxford for suspected homosexuality; courtship of his first wife, Penelope, when she was married and impregnating his second wife while still married to Penelope. His father, Clifford, a brilliant lawyer who eventually went blind, was the major influence on Mortimer's life, and he dramatized him repeatedly, most notably as Rumpole and in his play A Voyage Round My Father . An indefatigable barrister, Mortimer handled landmark obscenity cases as a Queen's Counsel. His friends and collaborators include Stoppard, Pinter and Olivier, and he rolled along in his wheelchair at Prince Charles's wedding to Camilla. Although lively, intelligent and remarkably frank for an authorized biography, Grove's latest will likely not create much of a stir in America, where Mortimer isn't a household name. Photos not seen by PW . (June 2)