John Mortimer
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- This article is about the writer. For the leader of the Kent rebellion, see Jack Cade.
Sir John Clifford Mortimer QC (born 21 April 1923) is an English barrister turned prolific writer and dramatist.
Educated at Harrow School and Brasenose College, Oxford, his oeuvre includes over fifty books, plays, and scripts. The play, A Voyage Round My Father (1971) is autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a young barrister and his relationship with his blind father. He developed his career as a playwright by rising early to write before attending court.
Image:Horace Rumpole.jpgMortimer's most famous creation is a character named Horace Rumpole, a barrister whose specialty is defending those accused of crime in London's redoubtable hall of justice, the Old Bailey. Mortimer created Rumpole for "Rumpole of the Bailey", a 1975 episode of Play For Today; Played with gusto by Leo McKern, the character proved popular, and was spun off into a Rumpole of the Bailey television series for Thames Television and a series of books (all written by Mortimer). In September – October 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast four new 45-minute Rumpole dramatizations by Mortimer starring Timothy West in the title role. Mortimer also dramatised many of the real-life cases of the barrister Edward Marshall-Hall in a radio series starring ex-Doctor Who star Tom Baker.
John Mortimer was married to Penelope Fletcher, later better known as Penelope Mortimer, in 1949 and had a son and a daughter by her. They divorced in 1971 and he married Penelope Gollop in 1972. They have two daughters. He has five children altogether, Sally Silverman, Jeremy Mortimer, Ross Bentley, Emily Mortimer and Rosie Mortimer and lives with his second wife, Penny Mortimer, in a village north of Henley-on-Thames in Buckinghamshire. In August 2004, he learned that he had an additional child he had not known about when he met his son Ross Bentley, more than 40 years after a secret affair with Wendy Craig. The son had been brought up by Craig and her husband, Jack Bentley, the show business writer and musician. In Mortimer's memoirs, Clinging to the Wreckage, he wrote of "enjoying my mid-thirties and all the pleasures which come to a young writer."