John Mortimer Plays One

Includes the playsA Voyage Around My Father, The Collaborators, The Dock Brief, Lunch Hour, and What Shall We Tell Caroline? An unsuccessful barrister and even more unsuccessful murderer are the subject of Mortimer’s first play, The Dock Brief. This was followed by What Shall We Tell Caroline? and then Lunch Hour, another short play, about love and lies in the lunch-hour. The Collaborators covers the wear and tear of married life subsequently united by the threat of a third party. A Voyage Round My Father, one of Mortimer’s greatest theatrical successes, is a celebration of the Shakespeare-quoting, eccentric, brave and impossible barrister the author had as a father.

Includes: A Voyage Around My Father, one of Mortimer's greatest theatrical successes and a celebration of the Shakespeare-quoting, eccentric, brave, and impossible barrister the author had as a father. Also includes: The Collaborators, The Dock Brief, Lunch Hour, and What Shall We Tell Caroline?

Includes the plays The Wrong Side of the Park, Come as You Are and Edwin This second volume of Oberon's new edition of John Mortimer's Collected Plays contains two full-length works, The Wrong Side of the Park and Edwin, and four short plays known collectively as Come As You Are and individually named after parts of London. Mill Hill concerns a dentist, his wife and a friend who likes to dress up as Sir Walter Raleigh for the purpose of making love. In Bermondsey, the well-adjusted life of a London publican, his wife and the man who loves him is disturbed by the presence of a young girl at Christmas time. Marble Arch is the story of an ageing film atar who believes that her rich lover has died in her bathroom, and it's up to her to dispose of the body. Knightsbridge deals with the misunderstandings and confusions that arise when the mother of a gril about to be married puts up a number of dunious advertisements in and around Knightsbridge. In Edwin, young Edwin - whom we never see - is coming from Canada to meet the family; but is he the son of a retired judge who can't stop trying things, or of a free-living, opera-whistling potter? Views on this question change radically during the course of the play.

'Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal' P. D. James Horace Rumpole - dishevelled barrister at law, drinker of claret and smoker of cigars, inveterate quoter of Wordsworth and eternal defender of the underdog - is one of the greatest English comic characters ever created. This is the original volume of Rumpole stories, introducing us to the legal triumphs that first made the Old Bailey Hack's name, along with a host of choice villains, frequent forays to Pommeroy's wine bar and, of course, his formidable, magisterial wife Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed. 'I thank heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole' Clive James 'A fruity, foxy masterpiece, defender of our wilting faith in mankind' Sunday Times

When Simeon Simcox, a socialist clergyman, leaves his entire fortune not to his family but to the ruthless, social-climbing Tory MP Leslie Titmuss, the Rector's two sons react in very different ways. Henry, novelist and former 'angry young man' turned grumpy old reactionary, decides to fight the will and prove their father was insane. Younger brother Fred, a mild-mannered country doctor, takes a different approach, quietly digging in Simeon's past, only to uncover an entirely unexpected explanation for the legacy. An exquisitely drawn saga of ancient rivalries and class struggles, featuring a glorious cast of characters, Paradise Postponed is a delicious portrait of English country life by a master satirist.

In Britain every generation produces a national treasure, a lovable figure so English that he could not possibly be of any other nationality, and Sir John Mortimer is just such a figure.Mortimer has delighted millions all over the world with seven television series about the gloriously larger-than-life fictional barrister Horace Rumpole --- Rumpole of the Bailey --- as well as novels, autobiographies, stage plays, film scripts, short stories, television and radio plays, newspaper articles, and even an opera and a ballet. Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Alec Guinness appeared in his plays, and among his greatest theatrical triumphs is his stage and television play A Voyage Round My Father. He won a British Book Awards trophy for Lifetime Achievement in 2005.Mortimer actually practiced as a barrister for thirty-six years, defending husbands, wives, pornographers, and murderers in court and starring as the real-life "Devil's Advocate" in several legendary obscenity and blasphemy cases in the 1970s, quickly becoming a liberal hero.Yet despite huge success, fame, and knighthood there lurks beneath that genial "champagne socialist" mask an unusually complex man who has been plagued by depression, doubt, insecurity, and an irresistible urge to commit adultery.Biographer Graham Lord, whose discovery that Mortimer had a secret son by the British actress Wendy Craig forced Sir John to admit it publicly in 2004, has interviewed scores of Mortmer's family, friends, mistresses, and enemies to write a frank and vital biography that reveals the startling reality behind the beloved public figure. "Breathless prose and many juicyrevelations-an absorbing read."--Kirkus Reviews

Summer's Lease - the classic, international bestselling novel by John Mortimer 'Amusing, entertaining ... and a cracking good read' Sunday Express 'And summer's lease hath all too short a date' - Sonnet 18, William Shakespeare It's high summer when Molly Pargeter drags her amiably bickering family to a rented Tuscan villa for the holidays. Molly is sure that the house is the perfect setting for their three-week getaway, but soon she becomes fascinated by the lives of the absent owners - and things start to go horribly wrong ... 'With a cosy fluency of wit, Mortimer charms us into his urbane tangle of clues' Mail on Sunday Summer's Lease, which was made into popular BBC TV mini-series starring John Gielgud, is a delightful novel from Rumpole author John Mortimer: witty, compassionate, humane, perfectly plotted and wonderfully readable. It will be adored by readers of P.G Wodehouse and P.D. James. Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional political trilogy of Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.

When a Tory MP is found dead in a swimming-pool wearing a leopardskin bikini, the embittered Leslie (now Lord) Titmuss sees the ideal opportunity to re-enter the political arena. All he needs is a puppet, and Terry Flitton - inoffensive New Labourite - is perfect. Along with his beautiful, very PC wife, Terry heads blindly for the Hartscombe and Worsfield South by-election. But is he too busy listening for the sound of victory trumpets to notice that the Tory dinosaur is not quite extinct? John Mortimer's brilliant follow-up to Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained, The Sound of Trumpets is a devilishly witty satire on political ambition, spin and sleaze, and the culmination of a masterly trilogy.