Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life

Offering the wise and warm story of the second half of his life, a sequel to Clinging to the Wreckage, the creator of Rumpole reveals friendships with those from the worlds of theater, film, law, and politics. Tour.

British novelist and playwright Mortimer (Paradise Postponed) begins this second volume of his autobiography at the point when he left his career as a barrister in the 1960s and was appointed to the position of Queen's Counsel. In entertaining and perceptive vignettes, his sequel to Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) recalls trials over which Mortimer presided that inspired the plot lines and characters populating Rumpole of the Bailey and the series that followed. Eventually leaving the law entirely, he devoted himself to writing. His reminiscences mention his friendships with actors and authors, including John Gielgud, David Niven and Harold Pinter. A principled nonbeliever (he refers to himself as "an atheist for Christ"), Mortimer helped to found the "20th of June" group that protested the conservatism of the Thatcher government. (His collaborators in this effort included Pinter and various social activists.) Mortimer also describes the work he has done in adapting such novels for film and TV as Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the second volume of his autobiography (the first was Clinging to the Wreckage, LJ 9/1/82), Mortimer, the former barrister turned author, writes, "Old lawyers never die, they simply lose their appeals." Not so with Mortimer. His appeal will go on and on, not unlike his creation, that old darling Rumpole of the Old Bailey. Wise, funny, and only occasionally sad, Mortimer is as readable as his scripts on television are watchable. His writing, regardless of the subject-father, mother, wife, daughter, friend, murderer, house, country-is full of affection, fully grounded in a view so dimensional that one would wish for his eyes, his ears, his heart. His profile of his father and mother, of David Niven and John Gielgud, snippets though they may be, are of considerable interest and even memorable. His view of the difference between the writing of a novel and the writing of a play is not only practical but affecting. Mortimer's writing is the stuff of flesh and blood, wronged and wooed, and should not be missed.
Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of the popular Rumpole stories as well as the lacerating political novel Paradise Postponed (1986) opens this tenderhearted sequel to his first autobiography (Clinging to the Wreckage [1987]) with anecdotes from his career as a queen's counsel, when he found himself establishing short-term but intense friendships with hard-core criminals during the course of their trials. His schizoid existence as a writer with a day job as a lawyer leads to a delightful juxtaposition of people and events, so that a description of a sordid murder trial is followed by a story about a raucous party thrown by director Tony Richardson. Pressured to practice law by his father--an avid gardener whose "ghost . . . is a hard one to banish, I still see him feeling for the flowers in his blindness . . . dressed in an ancient tweed suit"--Mortimer eventually quit the law to devote himself to writing. He talks of visiting Moscow with the Royal Shakespeare Company and swapping oft-heard jokes with a dying David Niven. In a self-deprecating, dryly amusing, unforgettable voice, Mortimer offers up the second part of his life story in a style so fluid, it seems effortless. Joanne Wilkinson