It was only in 1995, with the publication of the Rumpole and the Angel of Death collection, that Mortimer began writing original Rumpole stories (ie: ones not adapted from his own TV scripts).
The show ran, off and on, for seventeen years, an incredible run, and inspired not just short stories, but novels and two radio series as well. No wonder visions of plonk frequently danced through his head… But oh what a show! Every episode, almost always built around a clever little mystery or two, poor Horace rumbled his way through his life, suffering the slings and arrows of hostile judges, office politics and the pettiness and ambitions of his co-workers, crooked coppers, annoying clients, a legal system teetering on the brink, and all the domestic bliss one man should have to endure, under the stern and disapproving eye of She Who Must Be Obeyed. Mortimer wrote each and every episode of the television series, as well as their subsequent novelizations. Rumpole is, of course John Mortimer’s rotund, defiant British criminal lawyer who, as brilliantly brought to life by the late, great Australian actor Leo McKern, the star of Rumpole of the Bailey, the popular British courtroom comedy/drama that originally aired on Thames Television in 1978, and soon became popular on both sides of the Atlantic, appearing on the American Public Broadcasting Service as part of its Mystery!series. May there always be an England, and may there always be Horace Rumpole to see that justice be done. With his best gal, Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed, standing, NOT amused, by his side… This proud, this defiant Old Bailey Hack… May I submit for inclusion, Your Honour, this most British of all lawyers… His always entertaining jabs at the soft underbelly of hypocrisy, pomposity and upper class twits…Īnd for standing up for truth, justice, honour and the Golden Thread of Justice… His food-bespeckled robe and raggedy wig…Īnd his beloved and tattered copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse clutched to his bosom… His fondness for Wordsworth, Chateau Thames Embankment and hopeless cases… That great defender of most muddled and sinful humanity… He talks as the man of his age talks - that is, with a rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.”Īnd so, may I submit for your consideration, Your Honour…. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.
He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. Like Philip Marlowe, HORACE RUMPOLE is “a relatively poor man… a common man or he could not go among common people. Lord knows, he’s not a private eye–but I wish he were. Down those mean streets and meaner chambers a man must waddle…