Лучшие книги Джона Мортимера

John Mortimer has led an extraordinary life as a playwright, bestselling novelist, and former practicing barrister. In "The Summer of a Dormouse", the third installment of his autobiography, he describes what it is like to be seventy-seven years of age but to feel like a child. While he suffers from the afflictions that his father had to contend with-asthma, glaucoma-and added some of his own, he continues to live with boundless energy, passion, and humor. "The Summer of a Dormouse" is a warm and charming chronicle of one year in a rich and very full life.

When most people his age are in full retirement, John Mortimer is still motoring through life, taking on new projects-working on a film with Zeffirelli in a house in Rome, contriving the renovation of the Royal Court Theatre building, and championing his most passionate cause, prison reform. Whether in the English countryside, the center of London, the heart of Tuscany, or the streets of Morocco, he embraces life and work with enthusiasm and compassion, revealing himself as one of the most astute and generous figures of his generation.

Horace Rumpole - witty, eloquent, dishevelled and cynical - is one of fiction's best-loved barristers-at-law.
In these twenty classic tales, Rumpole battles through the Old Bailey, whether defending various members of an incompetent South London crime family, taking on haute-cuisine chefs and showfolk or mocking the pomposity of his own profession, all the while being held in check by his wife, Hilda: the wonderful, fearsome She Who Must Be Obeyed.
These collected stories, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, are a definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters in British comic writing and a reminder of what justice should really be about. With a new introduction by Sam Leith, former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph and contributor to the Evening Standard, Guardian and Spectator.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the young Horace Rumpole in this second stellar collection of court cases, also starring Timothy West as the older Rumpole

Rumpole and the Man of God
It is 1959, and Rumpole must defend a clergyman accused of shoplifting who, although he clearly did not commit the crime, is curiously reluctant to be cross-examined under oath. Meanwhile, Hilda (she who must be obeyed) has big news…

Rumpole and the Explosive Evidence
Rumpole defends a well-known safe blower and exposes the underhand behaviour of one Dirty Dickerson, a senior police officer who is quite prepared to tamper with evidence.

Rumpole and the Gentle Art of Blackmail
In 1964 Rumpole returns to Oxford, where he studied law, to defend a young gardener who is accused of blackmailing the Master of St Joseph’s College. Their friendship had provoked rumours of homosexuality – still illegal in those days – and the Master says he has been threatened with a public accusation.

Rumpole and the Expert Witness
Rumpole is asked to defend a GP, Dr Ned Dacre, who is accused of murdering his wife, Sally. The plot thickens when the local pathologist turns out to have history with Dr Ned…

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the young, feisty, devastatingly acute Horace Rumpole in this collection of cracking cases, also starring Timothy West as the older Rumpole.

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders:
It is the fifties, and two war heroes have been shot dead. Defending the suspect is deemed hopeless, so the case is handed to a novice. But the novice's superiors didn't count on the tenacity and wit of the young and hungry Horace Rumpole, as he defends the accused alone and without a leader for the very first time. This two-part adaptation of the novel by John Mortimer also marks the beginning of Rumpole's life-long liason with Hilda ("She Who Must Be Obeyed").

Rumpole and the Family Pride:
We rejoin Rumpole and Hilda in the late 1950s, when they have been married for a year or two. Hilda's cousin lives with her husband, the 17th Baron Sackbut, in Sackbut Castle on the Yorkshire Moors. Hilda and Rumpole are invited to the castle when a body is found in the grounds. Meanwhile, in London, Rumpole defends a tramp who has confessed to a triple-murder.

Rumpole and the Eternal Triangle:
When Rumpole and Hilda attend a concert performed by The Casterini Trio, Rumpole is surprised to be approached by Elizabeth Casterini - the trio's beautiful violinist. But then the Trio's cellist, Tom Randall, is murdered. Elizabeth's husband is arrested, and Rumpole agrees to defend him at the Old Bailey.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the young Horace Rumpole in this second stellar collection of court cases, also starring Timothy West as the older Rumpole

Rumpole and the Man of God
It is 1959, and Rumpole must defend a clergyman accused of shoplifting who, although he clearly did not commit the crime, is curiously reluctant to be cross-examined under oath. Meanwhile, Hilda (she who must be obeyed) has big news…

Rumpole and the Explosive Evidence
Rumpole defends a well-known safe blower and exposes the underhand behaviour of one Dirty Dickerson, a senior police officer who is quite prepared to tamper with evidence.

Rumpole and the Gentle Art of Blackmail
In 1964 Rumpole returns to Oxford, where he studied law, to defend a young gardener who is accused of blackmailing the Master of St Joseph’s College. Their friendship had provoked rumours of homosexuality – still illegal in those days – and the Master says he has been threatened with a public accusation.

Rumpole and the Expert Witness
Rumpole is asked to defend a GP, Dr Ned Dacre, who is accused of murdering his wife, Sally. The plot thickens when the local pathologist turns out to have history with Dr Ned…

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the young, devastatingly acute Horace Rumpole in this third thrilling collection of court cases

Rumpole and the Old Boy Net: With the help of his new pupil, Miss Phillida Trant, Rumpole must defend Mr Napier Lee, who is charged with blackmail. But the alleged victim of the blackmail went to public school with the defendant, and Mr Lee won't sneak on his old school chum...

Rumpole and the Sleeping Partners: After a legal ball in the Savoy Hotel, Rumpole and Hilda argue about Rumpole's drunken behaviour and Rumpole decides to sleep the night on his sofa in chambers - strictly against the rules. But there he finds his colleague Erskine-Brown with Phillida Trant, 'working late'...

Rumpole and the Portia of our Chambers: Rumpole comes close to giving up the law when forced to consider the path his life has taken by a combination of his attraction to his pupil Phillida, an unsettling case involving an Irish terrorist, and a visit from an old flame of Hilda's.

Horace Rumpole, the irrepressible barrister fuelled by cigars, Tennyson, steak-and-kidney pud and the cooking claret from Pommeroy's wine bar, is back for further misadventures. Amid an unfortunate and temporary downturn in London crime, the Old Bailey Hack sits in Chambers (he never writes at home for fear of She Who Must Be Obeyed) and picks up his pen to recount six classic tales of his recent trials. Here he deals with, among others, a clergyman on a shoplifting rampage, a backstage theatrical murder, a villain with unfortunate sartorial taste and, worst of all, the possibility that he may have to hang up his wig and retire.

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.

Zerah Colburn was a well-known nineteenth century locomotive engineer, journalist and publisher. In life he mixed with the famous men of engineering in America and Britain. Ans he was among 200 leading Americans nominated for New York University's Hall of Fame. But Colburn was an enigma, a dark and irascible man with a violent temper. His work colleagues in London called him the 'Spirit of Darkness'. But why did he shoot himself at...

The popular author of the Rumpole of the Bailey series ponders the non-material legacy he hopes to leave to the next generation, sharing humorous thoughts about the pleasures he has experienced through drink, outdoor sex, and his vision of God as the "Grand Perhaps."

The Rumpole renaissance continues to build, and now the beloved barrister’s many followers have a special reason to rejoice: a sensational full-length Rumpole novel that at last relates the oft-mentioned but never revealed story of Rumpole’s first case, the Penge Bungalow affair. Looking back half a century into a very different world, Rumpole recalls a man accused of murdering his father and his father’s friend with a pistol taken from a dead German pilot. It was this trial and its outcome that put Rumpole on the map and shaped him into the cantankerous defender of justice that readers know and love. This is a must-read for every Rumpole fan and a compelling invitation to new readers.

John Mortimer is best known as the creator of Rumpole QC, hero of the Rumpole of the Bailey television series. In this second volume of his Collected Plays published by Oberon, these five plays combine London settings with the complexities of relationships between the sexes. Includes: The Wrong Side of the Park, Mill Hill, Bermondsey, Knightsbridge, Marble Arch and Edwin.

Rumpole and the Primrose Path - six hilarious crime capers starring John Mortimer's iconic character
'Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal' P. D James, Mail on Sunday
'I thank heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole' Clive James, Observer
Rumpole was last seen in his hospital bed after his sudden collapse in court. Now our hero finds himself in the Primrose Path nursing home - or a hospice as he persists in describing it.

The comic, courageous, and corpulent Horace Rumpole reenters the fray in these seven fresh and funny stories in which the “great defender of muddled and sinful humanity” triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness while he tiptoes precariously through the domestic territory of his wife, Hilda-She Who Must Be Obeyed! With his passion for poetry, and a nose equally sensitive to the whiff of wrongdoing and the bouquet of a Château Thames Embankment, the lovable and disheveled Rumpole “is at his rumpled best” (The New York Times).

Leslie Titmuss is the anti-hero of "Paradise Postponed", portrayed on screen by David Threlfall. In this novel, John Mortimer continues the rise of the complaisant Titmuss, now married to a second unpleasant wife.

An enchanting early novel from the author of the bestselling Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained. A faithful wife and devoted mother finds herself compelled to take extraordinary steps to protect her family when a young actress with ties to her husand is found murdered near their home.

Its June 1944 in an English seaside resort and a shy young man has just joined an army film unit making a documentary about army training. While shooting a cliff-scaling exercise a sergeant plunges to his death. It seems like an accident, but the shy young man is not convinced.

n this spirited memoir John Mortimer, an esteemed barrister as well as novelist, playwright, and journalist, relates all the paradoxes and pleasures of his double life.
With wit and style, Mr. Mortimer takes you from his unusual childhood (his father, a blind barrister, insisted that his wife read the sordid details of his divorce briefs in public) to the dilemmas of his life as a barrister (one of his clients indignantly declared, "Your Mr. Rumpole could have gotten me out of this, why the hell can't you!").

Filled with laughter and a sense of the absurd, , Clinging to the Wreckage makes it clear why John Mortimer has been called Noel Coward, P. G. Wodehouse, and Evelyn Waugh rolled into one.

A collection of stories featuring Rumpole of the Bailey, including "Rumpole and the Younger Generation", "Rumpole and the Alternative Society", "Rumpole and the Honourable Member", "Rumpole and the Married Lady, "Rumpole and the Learned Friends" and "Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade".