Sir John Mortimer

Sir John Mortimer (born April 21, 1923, Hampstead, London, Eng.—died Jan. 16, 2009, near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, Eng.) was an English barrister and writer who wrote plays for the stage, television, radio, and motion pictures, as well as novels and autobiographical works.

Mortimer was educated at Harrow and at Brasenose College, Oxford, and began writing before he was called to the bar in 1948. In 1949 he married Penelope Ruth Fletcher (the novelist Penelope Mortimer; divorced 1972). Mortimer began his writing career as a novelist, with Charade (1947). Many of his short stories and novels drew on his legal experience, and the television production of his play The Dock Brief established his reputation.

Mortimer wrote many other plays, including The Wrong Side of the Park (performed 1960) and The Judge (performed 1967). He successfully adapted the farce A Flea in Her Ear (1965, from Georges Feydeau) and the novel Brideshead Revisited (1981, from Evelyn Waugh). One of his finest works is A Voyage Round My Father (1970), an autobiographical play about his relationship with his blind father.

Throughout his writing career Mortimer maintained a thriving law practice and became known as one of Great Britain’s principal defenders in free-speech and civil-rights cases. As a writer he had popular success in the late 1970s and ’80s with the television series Rumpole of the Bailey and short stories featuring the crusty old British barrister Horace Rumpole. His novels include Paradise Postponed (1985) and Dunster (1992). Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) is a frank autobiography. Mortimer was knighted in 1998.