Forever Rumpole
The Best of the Rumpole Stories
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Forever Rumpole - a hilarious new selection of the very best Rumpole stories by John Mortimer
Horace Rumpole lives alongside Mr Pickwick and Bertie Wooster as one of the immortal comic characters in English fiction. With his curmudgeonly wit, his literary allusions, his disdain for personal ambition and his lack of pomposity, he has, in the words of the Daily Telegraph, 'ascended to the pantheon of literary immortals'.
Forever Rumpole contains seven stories originally chosen by the author himself as his favourites, together with a further seven from the later period and the opening chapters of a Rumpole novel that Sir John was working on when he died in 2009. The book also includes a fascinating introduction by Ann Mallalieu, fellow lawyer and for many years Sir John's colleague in practice.
'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
Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional trilogy about the inexorable rise of an ambitious Tory MP in the Thatcher years (Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets) has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of "Rumpole and the Younger Generation," the first story in this posthumous "best of" collection, Mortimer's curmudgeonly, Wordsworth-quoting barrister, Horace Rumpole, mentions that he'll be "sixty-eight next birthday." The case at hand involves a younger member of South London's nonviolently criminal Timson clan, and a key point in the accused lad's trial hinges on the date of a Rolling Stones concert that year, 1965. In the penultimate, post-9/11 entry, "Rumpole and the Christmas Break," Rumpole defends a Pakistani student accused of murdering a history professor, Honoria Glossup (a name borrowed from Mortimer's literary mentor, P.G. Wodehouse), who wrote a book critical of "the cruelties committed by Islamic fundamentalists." In the decades in between, in a number of witty, ingeniously plotted adventures that often deal with issues of the day (the women's movement, animal rights, euthanasia), the ageless, principled barrister must contend with colleagues who scheme to bring about his retirement (when they aren't hoping for his demise); judges who blatantly favor the prosecution; and his disapproving wife, Hilda (aka "She Who Must Be Obeyed"). A glass or two of Chateau Thames Embankment at Pommeroy's Wine Bar offers consolation. Ann Mallalieu, a barrister who worked with the, alas, mortal Mortimer (1923 2009) and made the selections, provides an illuminating introduction. A fragment of an uncompleted novel rounds out a volume sure to be treasured by both old fans and new.
