John Mortimer

Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and (Herbert) Clifford Mortimer (1884–1961), a divorce and probate barrister who became blind in 1936 when he hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi but still pursued his career.

Clifford's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.

John Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Harrow School, where he joined the Communist Party, forming a one-member cell.

Sir John Clifford Mortimer (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.

He is best known for short stories about a barrister named Horace Rumpole, adapted from episodes of the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey also written by Mortimer.

He first intended to be an actor (his lead role in the Dragon's 1937 production of Richard II gained glowing reviews in The Draconian) and then a writer, but his father persuaded him against it, advising: "My dear boy, have some consideration for your unfortunate wife... [the law] gets you out of the house."

At 17, Mortimer went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read law, though he was actually based at Christ Church because the Brasenose buildings had been requisitioned for the war effort.

In July 1942, at the end of his second year, he was sent down from Oxford by John Lowe, Dean of Christ Church, after romantic letters to a Bradfield College sixth-former, Quentin Edwards, later a QC, were discovered by the young man's housemaster.

However, Mortimer was still allowed to take his Bachelor of Arts degree in law in October 1943.

His close friend Michael Hamburger believed he had been very harshly treated.

With weak eyes and doubtful lungs, Mortimer was classified as medically unfit for military service in World War II.

He worked for the Crown Film Unit under Laurie Lee, writing scripts for propaganda documentaries.

"I lived in London and went on journeys in blacked-out trains to factories and coal-mines and military and air force installations. For the first and, in fact, the only time in my life I was, thanks to Laurie Lee, earning my living entirely as a writer. If I have knocked the documentary ideal, I would not wish to sound ungrateful to the Crown Film Unit. I was given great and welcome opportunities to write dialogue, construct scenes and try and turn ideas into some kind of visual drama."

He based his first novel, Charade, on his experiences with the Crown Film Unit.

Mortimer was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1948, at the age of 25.

Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, adapting his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme.

His debut as an original playwright came with The Dock Brief starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's Third Programme, and later televised with the same cast.

It won the Prix Italia in 1957, and its success on radio, stage, and television led Mortimer to prefer writing for performance rather than writing novels.

It later appeared in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre.

Mortimer's play A Voyage Round My Father, first broadcast on radio in 1963, is autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a young barrister and his relations with his blind father.

His early career covered testamentary and divorce work, but on taking silk in 1966, he began to undertake criminal law.

His highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity, which, according to Mortimer, were "alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance."

He has sometimes been cited wrongly as one of the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial defence team.

He did, however, successfully defend publishers John Calder and Marion Boyars in a 1968 appeal against a conviction for publishing Hubert Selby Jr..'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.

He assumed a similar role three years later, this time unsuccessfully, for Richard Handyside, the English publisher of The Little Red Schoolbook.

It was televised by BBC Television in 1969 with Mark Dignam in the title role.

In a lengthier version, the play became a stage success – first at Greenwich Theatre with Dignam, then in 1971 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Alec Guinness). In 1981 it was remade by Thames Television with Laurence Olivier as the father and Alan Bates as young Mortimer. In 1965, he and his wife wrote the screenplay for the Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake is Missing, which also starred Olivier.

In 1971, Mortimer managed to defend the editors of the satirical paper Oz against a charge of "conspiracy to corrupt and debauch the morals of the young of the Realm", which might have carried a sentence of 12 years' hard labour.

Mortimer created Rumpole for a BBC Play For Today in 1975.

Although not Mortimer's first choice of actor – in an interview on the DVD set, he said he wanted Alistair Sim "but he turned out to be dead so he couldn't take it on" – Australian-born Leo McKern played Rumpole with gusto and proved popular.

The idea was developed into a series, Rumpole of the Bailey, for Thames Television, in which McKern kept the lead role.

Mortimer also wrote a series of Rumpole books.

In 1975 and 1976, Mortimer adapted eight of Graham Greene’s short stories for episodes of Shades of Greene presented by Thames Television.

In 1976, he defended Gay News editor Denis Lemon (Whitehouse v. Lemon) against charges of blasphemous libel for publishing James Kirkup's The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name; Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence, which was overturned on appeal.

He successfully defended Virgin Records in a 1977 obscenity hearing for using the word bollocks in the title of the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and the manager of the Nottingham branch of Virgin record shop chain for displaying and selling the record.

Mortimer retired from the bar in 1984.

Mortimer is best remembered for creating a barrister named Horace Rumpole, inspired by his father Clifford, whose speciality is defending those accused in London's Old Bailey.

In September–October 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast four new 45-minute Rumpole plays by Mortimer with Timothy West in the title role.

Mortimer also dramatised many real-life cases of the barrister Edward Marshall-Hall in a radio series with former Doctor Who star Tom Baker as protagonist.

The Dock Brief was revived by Christopher Morahan in 2007 for a touring double bill with Legal Fictions.