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The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole
  • Published: 29 September 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141912370
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole




'Another immensely likeable outing for literature's favourite lion of justice' Daily Mail

ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. Not that Hilda agrees, of course, but she's too busy completing her memoirs to dissuade him from taking an interest when one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street. And pretty soon he realizes something fishy is going on. Why are the residents pursuing their vendetta against the Timson boy quite so strongly? Could they have a sinister reason for not wanting him on their street?

John Mortimer's delightful new Rumpole novel sees the magician of the Old Bailey, and Pommeroy's Wine Bar, at his implacable best as he defends our ancient freedoms, even as he remains uneasy about what it is exactly Hilda is writing ...

  • Published: 29 September 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141912370
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 208

About the author

John Mortimer

John Mortimer was born on 21 April 1923. His father was a successful divorce lawyer, and was to be a considerable influence on his son's life. Schooled at Harrow, Mortimer went on to study law at Brasenose College, Oxford. On finishing his degree, he was called to the Bar in 1948 and entered his father's chambers. At first he followed his father and specialised in divorce cases, but he soon switched to criminal law, as he maintained that murderers and the like were nicer to work with than divorcing spouses. In 1966 he became a Queen's Counsel, and he continued to work as a barrister until 1979. A lifelong champion of free speech, he has argued for the defence in some of the most famous obscenity trials in Britain, including the one brought against the underground magazine Oz for its notorious 'School Kids' issue. John Mortimer started writing before he became a barrister. His legal career inspired his fiction, however, with his first radio play, The Dock Brief (1957) dealing with the subject of an ageing barrister who is asked to defend a man accused of murdering his wife. It won the Italia Prize and was adapted for the stage, television and a film starring Peter Sellers and Richard Attenborough. He also had great success with his autobiographical play A Voyage Round My Father, which ran in the West End starring Jeremy Brett and Alec Guinness. It was subsequently adapted for TV starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates. He first wrote about Rumpole in a BBC TV Play for Today called Rumpole of the Bailey. Centring on a lovable Old Bailey hack with a penchant for cigars and claret and a domineering wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, the play was an instant hit, and in 1978 the first Thames Television series was aired under the same name, starring Leo McKern as Rumpole. It became hugely popular, and five more series followed. The first collection of Rumpole stories was published in 1978, and was followed by a further twelve volumes. His other novels include the trilogy of Titmuss novels, Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets, and he has also written three volumes of autobiography (Clinging to the Wreckage, Murderers and Other Friends and Summer of a Dormouse) and numerous TV and film adaptations, including Brideshead Revisited, Cider with Rosie and Tea with Mussolini. John Mortimer received a knighthood for his services to the arts in 1998 in the Queen's birthday honours list. He died in 2009.

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Praise for The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole

Praise for Rumpole and the Reign of Terror: 'Rumpole is back, as gloriously seedy as ever. Mortimer's divine hero is one of the few fictional immortals of our time' The Times 'Written with Mortimer's customary aplomb and an infectious enjoyment' Elizabeth Buchan, Sunday Times 'A fine comic creation. A figure who represents something important: the defence of liberty against the arrogance of power' Scotsman