I read some of the Rumpole books many years ago and I was delighted when I found several at my favorite UBS last week. I found that I enjoyed them every bit as much as before, plus now that I’m in the legal field myself, I “got” more of the jokes. Mortimer was called to the Bar ( Inner Temple) in 1948, at the age of 25. His early career covered testamentary and divorce work, but on taking silk in 1966, he began to undertake criminal law. [7] His highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity, which, according to Mortimer, were "alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance." [6] Charade, Mortimer's first novel, Bodley Head, London (1947); Viking, New York (1986); ISBN 0-670-81186-6

Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life (autobiography), Viking, London (1994); Viking, NY (1995); ISBN 0-670-84902-2 Horace Rumpole, the irreverent, iconoclastic, claret-swilling, poetry-spouting barrister at law, is among the most beloved characters of English crime literature. He is not a particularly gifted attorney, nor is he particularly fond of the law by courts if it comes to that, but he'd rather be swinging at a case than bowing to his wife Hilda, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Whether Rumpole is in court or lighting up a cigar and quaffing a glass of Chateau Fleet Street at his favourite after-hours haunt, Pommeroy's Wine Bar, Rumpole is accompanied by an endearing supporting cast that is an integral part of the amusing, indeed often hilarious stories that Mortimer has produced - Guthrie Featherstone QC MP, the stiffly starched and prissy (yet often philandering) head of chambers; Claude Erskine-Brown, the slightly looser barrister who is head over heels in love with the only female member of chambers, the eloquent and deeply feminist Phillida Trant; Rumpole's wife, Hilda, the imposing "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed"; and Percy Timson, the patriarch of a widespread London family of low-level criminals whose bumbling failures are destined to keep Rumpole supplied with a steady stream of defense briefs for as long as he cares to work. Ah, Rumpole! This is one of my comfort reads which never makes me fail to smile at Rumpole's glorious irreverence. He may be down at heel with his shabby hat, his cigar-ash strewn waistcoat and his still junior status at the age of 68 but no-one knows how to appeal to a jury like Horace R. Nothing fazes Rumpole. He faces his challenges, surviving on comfort food, smoking cheap cigars, drinking coarse wine, and wearing a hat that earns him much derision. In the process, as he quotes verse at the drop of a hat, he entertains the reader with his dry humour.The Best of Rumpole: A Personal Choice (1993) Contains seven Rumpole stories personally selected as favourites by John Mortimer. Within many short stories and occasional novels, which were written over a 29-year period (1978–2007), Rumpole's biographical details fluctuated. For example, in the first book, published in 1978, Rumpole mentions buying his wig in 1932, and another time to proposing to Hilda in 1938, and his "sixty-eight next birthday". In Rumpole and the Fascist Beast it is mentioned that Rumpole was born sometime before the outbreak of World War I. These last two pieces of information would indicate a birth year of 1911, but later books contradict this. Rumpole and the Primrose Path, for instance, appeared in 2003 and was set in the present day, but Rumpole was in his seventies, not 92. Nonetheless, when in Rumpole and the Primrose Path Erskine-Brown asks Rumpole what he sings to himself when he is alone, Rumpole replies, "A ballad of the war years."

With weak eyes and doubtful lungs, Mortimer was classified as medically unfit for military service in World War II. [7] He worked for the Crown Film Unit under Laurie Lee, writing scripts for propaganda documentaries. Rumpole raises tensions with his American daughter-in-law Erica (Deborah Fallender) because of their differing views (such as her disapproval of his cross-examining a rape victim he believed to be lying). [12] His associates' dynamic social positions contrast with his relatively static views, which causes feelings between him and the others to shift over time. The UK book contained seven stories. The US version – titled A Rumpole Christmas – contained five stories. It omitted "Millennium Bug" and "Christmas Party") Rumpole enjoys smoking inexpensive cigars ( cheroots), drinking cheap red wine and a diet of fried breakfasts, overboiled vegetables and steak and kidney pudding. Every day he visits "Pomeroy's", [1] a wine bar on Fleet Street within walking distance of the Old Bailey and his chambers at Equity Court, at which he contributes regularly to an ever-increasing bar tab by purchasing glasses of red wine of questionable quality, which he calls variously "Cooking Claret", "Pomeroy's Plonk", "Pomeroy's Very Ordinary", "Chateau Thames Embankment", or "Chateau Fleet Street". (The last two terms are particularly derogatory: the subterranean Fleet river, which flows below Farringdon Street in a culvert and crosses under one end of Fleet Street at Ludgate Circus, served as the main sewer of Victorian London, [2] while the Thames Embankment in central London was a reclamation of marshy land that, until the 1860s, was notably polluted).

T.C. Rowley, widely known as "Uncle Tom" ( Richard Murdoch) (Series 1–6 and Special). "The oldest member of Chambers, who has not had a brief as long as any of us can remember." Rumpole first joined C. H. Wystan's chambers as Uncle Tom's pupil. [15] He is usually seen happily practising his golf putting in the clerk's room, or offering cheerfully inappropriate comments in Chambers' meetings.