the creator of SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED

john mortimer, has passed. i don't know if you've ever read rumpole but you should. rumpole (of course it was really mortimer) was smart, funny, witty, a curmudgeon and someone i would want to share a beverage with


John Mortimer, barrister and creator of Rumpole, is dead

By Helen T. Verongos
Published: January 16, 2009

John Mortimer, barrister, author, playwright and creator of Horace Rumpole, the cunning defender of the British criminal classes, has died, said his publisher at Viking, Tony Lacey. He was 85.

Mortimer created the character Rumpole of the Bailey, an endearing and enduring relic of the British legal system who became a television hero of the courtroom comedy.

To read Rumpole, or watch the episodes, is to enter not only Rumpole's stuffy flat or crowded legal chambers, but also to feel the itch of his yellowing court wig and the flapping of his disheveled, cigar-ash-dusted courtroom gown. Rumpole spends his days quoting Keats and his nights quaffing claret at Pommeroy's wine bar, putting off the time that he must return to his wife, Hilda, more commonly known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Using his wit and low-comedy distractions, Rumpole sees that justice is done, more often than not by outsmarting the "old sweethearts" and "old darlings" of the bench and revealing the inner good - or at least integrity and inconsistency - of the accused, including clans like the Timsons, whose crimes have kept generations of police officers busy.........

(hat tip to madame arcati
The death of John Mortimer


picture: the author John Mortimer in 1996. (Eric Draper/AP Photo)