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  • Published: 2 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141198828
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 656

The Collected Stories of Rumpole





Twenty of the best stories of the irrepressible pillar of the British legal system, Horace Rumpole. With an introduction by Sam Leith

For the first time in Penguin Modern Classics, this is a new selection of some of the best moments in the trials of Horace Rumpole, fiction's most loved barrister-at-law. When not downing Château Fleet Street in Pommeroy's Wine Bar or held in check by She Who Must Be Obeyed, the Old Bailey hack can be found battling through the Law Courts with his formidable mixture of wit, eloquence, cynicism and scruffiness. And whether he is defending various members of the notorious and incompetent south London crime family, the Timsons, or mocking the pomposity and hypocrisy of his own profession, Rumpole is an amiably relentless reminder of what justice should really be about. These twenty stories serve as the definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters in British comic writing, in all his shabby glory.

  • Published: 2 January 2014
  • ISBN: 9780141198828
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 656

About the author

John Mortimer

John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist and former practising barrister. During the war he worked with the Crown Film Unit and published a number of novels, before turning to theatre. He has written many film scripts, and plays both for radio and television, including A Voyage Round My Father, the Rumpole plays, which won him the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.He has written four volumes of autobiography, including Clinging to the Wreckage and Where There's a Will (2003). His novels include the Leslie Titmuss trilogy, about the rise of an ambitious Tory MP: Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets, and the acclaimed comic novel, Quite Honestly (2005). He has also published numerous books featuring his best-loved creation Horace Rumpole, including Rumpole and the Primrose Path (2002) and Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders (2004). All these books are available in Penguin.He lives in what was once his father's house in the Chilterns. He has received a knighthood for his services to the arts. His authorized biography, written by Valerie Grove, will be published by Viking in Spring 2007.

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Praise for The Collected Stories of Rumpole

I thank Heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole

Clive James

Rumpole is simply one of the great fictional characters of modern English literature

Marcel Berlin, Sunday Times

The best mock heroic fatty since Falstaff

Alan Coren
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