INTERVIEW
Sir John Mortimer
by Andrew F. Gulli
"Both my father and I were guilty of infidelity to the law; my mistress was writing, his was the garden."
—John Mortimer Murderers and Other Friends (1994)

SIR John Mortimer's so-called infidelity to the law has resulted—much to the delight of his fans—in an ever-increasing body of work which includes numerous novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays as well as three very entertaining memoirs—Clinging to the Wreckage (1983), Murderers and Other Friends (1994), and The Summer of a Dormouse (2000).
John Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London in 1923. In 1940 he entered Oxford University's Brasenose College, where he studied law. During World War II he served as a scriptwriter and assistant director for the Crown Film Unit. His first novel, Charade, was published in 1947. One year later, in 1948, he was admitted to the Bar. Like his father before him Mortimer became a divorce barrister, but after handling divorce cases for several years, he grew tired of dealing with bickering spouses at their worst and turned to criminal law where he found criminals to be a more reasonable class of people. He became a Queen's Counsel and left behind depressing divorce briefs to enter the world of criminals, jury trials, and Old Bailey hacks. It was in his capacity as a QC that he became acquainted with the kinds of characters and cases that would eventually populate the Rumpole stories.
Despite the success of his legal career, he regarded it largely as a day job "much like waitresing" and throughout those years continued to write prolifically for the stage and screen. He established himself as a successful playwright with such plays as The Dock Brief (1957), What Shall We Tell Caroline? (1958), The Wrong Side of the Park (1960), The Judge (1967), A Voyage Round My Father (1970), and Collaborators (1973). His most successful play is the autobiographical A Voyage Round My Father which gives an honest but affectionate portrayal of life with Mortimer's eccentric poetry-quoting father, on whom Mortimer's most famous creation was partially based. A Voyage Round My Father was successfully adapted into an award-winning BBC teleplay and later into an award-winning film starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates. He is also the author of several novels—many of which have been successfully adapted for television—including Summer's Lease (1991), Dunster (1993), Under the Hammer (1995), and a trilogy of novels—Paradise Postponed (1986), Titmus Regained (1991), and The Sound of Trumpets (1998)—following the rise and subsequent fall of Mortimer's scheming and merciless Tory MP, Leslie Titmuss, that offer an interesting portrayal of British parliamentary politics in which neither New Labour nor the Torries escape unscathed.
However, his most famous creation is the poetry-quoting, cigar-smoking "great defender of muddled and sinful humanity" Horace Rumpole, so adeptly brought to life for television viewers by the incomparable Leo Mckern of whom Sir John writes in Murderers and Other Friends, "Now, when Rumpole speaks in his own voice, it is always Leo's voice also." Mortimer has been chronicling Rumpole's adventures since 1978. His latest collection of Rumpole short stories, Rumpole and the Primrose Path, will be released by Viking Books in December 2003. At 80 years old Sir John continues to write as prolifically as ever. I spoke to him in February, 2002. At that time a new play of his called Naked Justice was due to open in London.

AFG:  I've enjoyed reading your books for a very long time.
JM: That's very kind. I think your magazine looks beautiful. I love the old-style magazine.
AFG: What are you working on now?
JM:   I'm rather busy.   I've done a couple of plays and I've got a play starting on Monday which is about three judges, but I am going to write another Rumpole.
AFG: Well I'm glad to hear that. The last story I read ["Rumpole Rests His Case," where he has a heart attack] had me worried.
JM:  He's going to recover, like Sherlock Holmes did, and come back. I think he's recuperating somewhere now.
AFG:  So tell me more about the play that's opening.
JM:  Well, you know, in England, judges arrive at a town, and they all live in a house which is kept for them and there are usually two judges—a civil judge and a criminal judge, and a lady judge who does the matrimonial cases, and a trial is going on and the judges are sort of blackmailing each other.   And terrible secrets about their pasts emerge.
AFG: That sounds fun. And who's acting in it?
JM:  An actor called Leslie Phillips.   I don't know whether you know him?
AFG:   Oh, yes.   He was in Summer's Lease.
JM:   He was.   He did a scene with John Gielgud in Summer's Lease.
AFG: Signer Fixit! The fellow who was always afraid of getting run over by a lorry!
JM: That's right.
AFG:   I know that you yourself were a QC.   Was there ever a person whom you defended who you really looked upon with a horrible revulsion, a person whom you thought, well I'd have been happy if they put him away?
JM:  Well you know, the theory is that everybody needs defending—you shouldnt judge the case before you—and nasty people get beaten more than nice people on the whole. But the worst thing is to believe your client has to be innocent. Then you lose all sense of proportion. I mean, if you think perhaps they did it, then you see all the points against you, but you're not really meant to decide whether they're innocent or guilty. The only one I really turned away from was a divorce case. The husband was my client and was supposed to have done dreadful things to his wife, but he turned out to be an Assistant Hangman. I said I wouldn't act for him. I said, "Get out of here. I don't want anything further to do with you." 
AFG: I don't know how anybody can have that job. You know, over here in parts of the United States they do have the death penalty. 
JM: Isn't it awful? 
AFG: It really is. And I think that many times innocent people die. 
JM: Well, they're all badly defended by public defenders, aren't they? And they can't spend any money on enquiries, expert evidence, or anything like that.
AFG:  Yes.  It's not like England of course . . .
JM: . . . where you get the best QC's for nothing. 
AFG:  So tell me, Rumpole had a Penge Bungalow case.  If you look back at your legal career, which would you say is your Penge Bungalow case?
JM: [He laughs] Well I thought of writing my Penge Bungalow case in the new lot [of Rumpole stories]. I did these, sort of, obscenity cases. There was a case—the Oz trials—which I did in the 60s when there were all those underground magazines. They came out with a schoolkids' edition, which it was said would corrupt the young. And that, I suppose, was one of my most famous cases. And I defended a book called Last Exit to Brooklyn. I did all those sorts of books.
AFG: And how about with murders? For example, have you ever gotten a man off whom everybody was pointing the finger at?
JM: Well, I did get a man off whom everyone was pointing the finger at, but after I got him off, I discovered he was a Mafia hitman. [He laughs]
AFG: Well you know, that wasn't a case you wanted to lose! 
JM: Yes! He was found in Soho kneeling beside the dead body. The bloodstained knife was in his motorcar. He didn't speak any English, so he had to have a girl interpreting for him in Italian. And, I think, they fell in love with each other in the witness box. Anyway, I got him off with no problem at all, but then in the end thev told me he was a Mafia hitman.
AFG: What mitigating circumstances did you find? JM: Well, it was all frightfully clear. He saw this bleeding body so he knelt down and touched him, which was why he got blood all over his hands. Then he found the knife and for some reason thought he'd put it in his car. The jury thought all that was wonderful! AFG: Did he really do it or do you think ....
JM: Yes, he did. I'm afraid he did.
AFG: Did he get into any more trouble after that or did Brixton prison cure him?
JM:  I didn't see him again.  I did a lot of murders but my murders were usually not gangland murders, but husbands' and wives' quarrels, lovers' quarrels, and best friends' quarrels. I did a Rumpole story about one— "The Tap End of the Bath." 
AFG: I remember reading that one. 
JM: That was totally true. The judge said, "You know, this cruel woman made her husband sit at the tap end of the bath," and so he got off. But the judge had never been made to sit at the tap end of the bath! AFG: That was a funny one. JM: That actually really happened!
AFG: So is there a Timson family in England? Are there families like the Timsons around?
JM: Well, they're a sort dying breed, aren't they, ordinary decent criminals. They're kind of dying out in the drug culture. That's what's changed a lot since my early days—drugs have taken over. 
AFG: You've probably been asked this thousands of times. Who did you model Rumpole on?
JM: Well, I think he is a bit like my father—you know my father was a barrister. He quoted poetry all the time at inapposite moments. And he said the things I think Rumpole does. And there was an old barrister named James Burge down at the Old Bailey, always called the judge "old darling" but never called his wife "old darling." I was sitting next to him and we were defending a little party of football hooligans who murdered some man in Charing Cross Station and he said, "I think I'm an anarchist at heart but I don't think even darling old Prince Peter Kropotkin would have approved of this lot." And I called the first Rumpole "My Darling Old Prince Peter Kropotkin," and the BBC said no one will have heard of him, a Russian anarchist, so I called it "My Darling Old Jean-Jacques Rousseau," and they said, well no one will have heard of him either, so I had to call it Rumpole of the Bailey—which is actually a very good title. 
AFG: What is Leo McKern like in real life? 
JM: He's rather conservative and Australian. He was born in Australia. Australians have got no respect for authority, and he hasn't either. He's old now, though, and he's not in very good shape. 
AFG: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. He is very funny. Did you see the film Decline and Fall?  He played the part of Captain Grimes. I don't know if you use the Internet. . . but they have a Captain Grimes fan club.
JM:  He [Captain Grimes] was a wonderful chap. 
AFG: Oh yes, always in the soup!
JM: Yes, always in the soup. [He laughs] They left the gun out loaded for him to do the decent thing and in the morning he'd drunk the whisky but hadn't shot himself.
AFG: Evelyn Waugh's books are great. So tell me, which classic authors did you admire most? Or contemporary authors
JM: Well, I was sort of brought up with Shakespeare. My father used to know all Shakespeare by heart and so I did too really. We used to go to every Shakespeare play when I was about eight. Then I liked Dickens very much; there are some very good Dickensian barristers. Actually there's a Rumpole in Trollope's Orley Farm. There's a grubby old criminal barrister who's rather like Rumpole. All those Victorian novels. My father knew all the Sherlock Holmes stones.
AFG: I know you used to read them to him after he lost his eyesight.
JM: Yes. I read those, and I read Wilkie Collins, who was a very strange man.
AFG: He's very underrated. All those great things like Armadale ....
JM:  Isn't Armadale an extraordinary book? 
AFG: It is an extraordinary book.  I think if Dickens had written it—and I like Dickens—but if Dickens had written it, it would have been serialised in England and America. 
JM:   It's the most extraordinary story and you know, I've just finished it again, and talking about coincidences, did you read the note at the end?
AFG:  I don't remember the note.  I read it when I was a kid. 
JM: Well, the girl in it dies in a room full of poisonous fumes. 
AFG:  She was the villainess, right?
JM: Yes, she's the villainess. But she finally walks into this room full of poisonous fumes and dies. And about a year after the book was published, three men on a ship in Liverpool Harbour, died one after the other from poisonous fumes in the room where they were sleeping, and the name of the ship was The Armadale. AFG: I didn't know that! What a coincidence. Armadale is one of my favorites.
JM:   It's brilliant, isn't it!   So I read all those.   And then I love Raymond Chandler and I'm very fond of Ruth Rendell and I like Phyllis James very much.   I had lunch with her yesterday. AFG:   Oh, P.D. James!  She's a very good writer. Which Rum-pole story would you say is your favourite?
JM:   Oh, I don't know.   I rather like the stories in this book, [Rumpole Rests His Case],   I'm rather proud of those.
AFG: I love the Christmas one, ["Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces"], but my real favorite is "Rumpole a la Carte."
JM: Oh, yes. I have a sort of show I do with two actresses and two musicians in which we go round theatres doing that one we read the bit in the restaurant where he asks for mashed potatoes with all those fancy dishes.
AFG:   That's my favorite part when he tells the waiter at this elegant restaurant to ask "Cookie" to serve him some mashed spuds and steak and kidney pie. 
JM:   [He laughs] Mashed spuds, yes! 
AFG:  So is your taste in food similar to Rumpole's? 
JM:    Oh yes, absolutely.    I can't bear these chefs who are egocentric.
AFG: In your stories, judges come across as ill-tempered men. Have you come across a judge that you liked? 
JM: [He laughs] Judges have changed a lot here now. They've become much less frightening. I just think it's a funny thing to want to do, judge people, really. But I have been a judge. I mean I have actually done judging, and I would hate to do it on a permanent basis. You get to a stage in England if you're a barrister when you're given a week as a judge, so I've done that. It's very difficult. If you're a good judge you're meant not to say anything—you know, you're meant to shut up—and that's very difficult for me! 
AFG: You never had to defend anyone in danger of receiving the death penalty, did you?
JM:  Oh no, I never did crime during those days. 
AFG:  It must have been very stressful for those who did. JM: The nearest I've come to it is that we have Appeals to the Privy Council from Singapore where they do have the death penalty. Of course, you don't see anybody at all.   It's done by paper, you know. Then if you lose it, a phone is rung and somebody hangs somewhere. AFG: That must be a horrible responsibility. 
JM:   Yes, terrible.
AFG: I was just looking through your film credits and I found that you wrote the script for Running Man by Carol Reed.
JM: With Laurence Harvey, yes. All I remember is that Carol Reed was amazingly tyrannical with scriptwriters. He wouldn't allow you to go to bed. He used to come into your room and turn the photographs of your wife to the wall in case you were thinking of her. [He laughs]
AFG: So you wrote a play, A Voyage Round my Father. What was it like to have Alec Guinness and then Laurence Olivier play your father?
JM: Well, it was the most dramatic time of my life. I mean I live in the house where I was a child—which was built by my father— and I watched my father die in the bedroom that looks out over the garden. Having done that, I watched Laurence Olivier in bed, the same bed, acting the death of my father with Alan Bates acting me and I thought, well that's really weird—a writer's life, to see everything once again and pretend.  It's very strange. 
AFG: Do you still do battle with the earwigs in the garden? 
JM:  No. We've given up the blood sports with the earwigs! 
AFG: How was Alec Guinness as your father? I know you said that the critics said that he wasn't charged enough for the role. He was more mellow.
JM: He was. My father could be quite frightening. He fell into terrible rages. I said to Alec, "You know, my father was quite frightening when he was in a temper," and Alec Guinness said, "Well, I do hit my egg very hard in the breakfast scene." But Laurence Olivier was better. Laurence Olivier was a quite dangerous actor. And you would look at him, because you didn't know quite what he was going to do next.  So he was good. 
AFG: And wasn't Rex Harrison close to playing your father? 
JM:   He was!   Luckily he didn't.   Luckily the film ran out of money.
AFG:  What are your memories of Rex Harrison? 
JM:  Oh, have you read Kenneth Tynan's diaries? 
AFG:  No, I have not.
JM: He's got one very good joke in it which is that Rex Harrison punches an autograph hunter outside the theatre and Ken Tynan says the headline in the paper should be, "The Shit hits the Fan!" [He laughs]
AFG: I read in one of your books about the way David Niven and Nigel Bruce pulled off a joke on him.
JM: Oh yes, with the tart. One of the things about Rex Harrison was that he wouldn't do anything which he thought his audience wouldn't think he was perfect in. So he was in a film called Staircase where he was meant to be gay and he said, "Well, I don't think I'm really gay here. I think I'm sort of bisexual." And then he was in a French farce called A Flea in her Ear. He was in the film version—which was not a very good film—and it all turns on the fact that the man is impotent and he said, "Well I can't be impotent. Maybe I'll be impotent for just one night, you know, but I can't play an impotent person." And then I knew what he'd say when he was going to play my father. He said, "I can't believe this man is really blind, you know. He can probably just see shades, can't he?" Because his fans wouldn't like him to be blind! When I went to discuss this film with Rex Harrison, I arrived in the South of France—he had a house down there—and I was getting ready to go to dinner. I was sitting in the hotel and the phone rang and the voice, which was definitely Rex's voice, said, "Oh Johnnie, are you coming round to dinner?" and I said, "Yes, I'm coming and looking forward to it," and he said, "I just want to tell you something before the others get here. I just want you to know that you're a complete shit and I want you to know that before the others get here." And I sort of said, "Oh no, Rex!" and there was a great big laugh, and it was David Niven in fact, because he lived in the South of France too, and he was imitating Rex. But it was just exactly what you would expect Rex to say. [He laughs] 
AFG: So what are your memories of David Niven? 
JM: I was very fond of him. I loved him. He was very funny and very sweet. You know the great David Niven story about the Japanese commercial? 
AFG: No.
JM: Well, he was asked to do a commercial for underarm deodorant and he said, "Well, of course I wouldn't dream of doing a commercial for an underarm deodorant," and they said, "Well, you know we'll pay you any money you like." And he said, "No, it doesn't matter about the money. I just won't do it." So they said, "Well, you can think of the story and you can do it any place in the world you want," and he said, "No, I've said I won't do it." So they said, "Well, it'll only be shown in Japan," and he said, "Well, if it's only going to be shown in Japan, that'll be ok." So he thought of a story. He was a sentry outside the Palace in Monte Carlo, and he got very, very hot in the sun and he lifted up his arm and applied this underarm deodorant. And he went away and collected all the money and thought this was wonderful—it would only be shown in Japan. And he arrived in the Connaught Hotel in London where he always stayed, and as he went in about ten charabancs pulled up and out of them got about a hundred Japanese people and they all looked at him and pointed under their arms and roared with laughter! But he was lovely. We used to go and stay with him in France and he'd tell us all about his days with Errol Flynn at the house that was called Cirrhosis by the Sea, and then I saw him when he was dying— you know, he died of Motor Neurone disease. It's a horrible way to die, dreadful.
AFG: I know. That was very sad. Tell me, what do you think of the state of writing today in general? Do you think that standards have fallen?
JM: I don't think that. I think the reason detective stories are so good, why crime writing is so good, is because they still have to have stories, whereas the sort of top class novels have gotten out of touch with storytelling. I think that theatre has to tell you a story too. That's the reason you turn the page or the reason you go on sitting in the stalls—you want to know what's going to happen. 
AFG: That's true.
JM: I think that's so important. And also, stories are so exciting to write because you start up and you've got a rather hazy idea of what the story is going to be and then suddenly things happen which you wouldn't really account for, and suddenly a story emerges.
AFG: So is that how you write? For example, you just start writing and then see where everything will go from there or do you have a basic idea of what you're going to do? JM: I think you have a basic idea of the territory and what you're attacking, like whether people shouldn't be allowed to smoke, things like that, and then also you have an idea of the crime and sort of where it's going to end. I remember I was terribly hard stuck for a story and then I thought of this character, who is a middle manager with a row of pens in his pocket and he always says, "at the end of the day" and "level playing field"—you know the things they say—and he comes into Rumpole's room and says, "I'm in trouble Mr. Rumpole . . .." and then he begins to tell this story. I didn't really know what it was going to be until he started talking—which is very exciting. So if you get the character right ....
AFG: What are some of the things that you enjoy besides writing?
JM: Well, now I've got a very big garden. I don't garden, but I supervise doing it, and I go to a lot of restaurants and I go to the cinema, go to the theatre, and I have a lot of children and five grandchildren. But I've got a daughter who's younger than one of my grandchildren, so I've got children that go from fifty to seventeen.
AFG: Well that's fun.
JM: That is fun! I'd like to have another younger one but I think those days are over.
AFG:  What are the films you enjoy seeing? And the theatre? 
JM:   Well I'm very fond of the Coen brothers.   I love the new Coen brothers' film.  And it's quite good, the cinema here.
AFG:  So, do you enjoy travelling?
JM: Well, I do. I'm just going to Morocco.
AFG: Where in Morocco?
JM: We go to a place called Taroudant which has a hotel called Gazelle d'Or, which is a wonderful hotel. We usually go there in January, but this year I had rehearsals for the play so I can't go until next week.   And we go to Italy in the summer and have a house near Sienna. 
AFG: Like Summer's Lease. 
JM: Exactly like Summer's Lease.
AFG: So how did you come up with the idea for Summer's Lease! 
JM:   Because I rented a house with all those messages in it, all those lists, and I thought it would be interesting to try and have a story about wondering who the people were. You'd never met them but you found traces of them all round the place. 
AFG: And how about the character of Haverford Downs? 
JM: Well, he's me at my worst! 
AFG:  So, who are your favourite playwrights? 
JM:  Apart from Shakespeare, Chekov, and modern ones, well, I like Pinter of course.   I like David Hare.   I was Chairman of the Royal Court Theatre for years and a lot of new young writers appeared. And I like all the Restoration plays. Bernard Shaw I'm fed up with!
AFG: The peripheral characters in Rumpole. Who did you base them upon?
JM:   Well they are people I knew at the Bar really.   I mean Erskine Brown going to the opera all the time, people in Chambers.  And also I based them quite a lot on the actors. 
AFG: Was there ever anybody like Uncle Tom who sat all day in the office just playing golf?
JM: Poor old Uncle Tom dropped dead on the golf course. Yes, there was always some unemployed old man who never had any work at all and spent his time doing The Times crossword puzzle. 
AFG: What's your opinion about the state of the world today, let's say, compared to when you were growing up? Are you more optimistic or more pessimistic about it?
JM: Well, I grew up in the shadow of war starting, so I suppose that wasn't an optimistic time. I think the optimistic time was just when the war ended and we had a Labour government and Welfare State and everything else and we thought everything was going to be different. And now I do think it's rather depressing. I mean, from my point of view as a Labour Parry supporter, the Labour Party has become totally conservative, which is what's happened to left wing parties everywhere really, hasn't it? But there don't seem to be any "ideals" left in politics anymore and I do think it's depressing. 
AFG: I mean, when you see two people debating, let's say, the Presidential Debate, they're the same, they're clones, and whenever anybody asks me who I'll vote for I always say, "You know, the best advice is vote for the person you find least repulsive on television . . .."
JM: That's right. Or you could put "None of the above," I think!
AFG:  Yes, "None of the above," because whoever you vote for the country stays the same all the time. 
JM: And they do the same thing exactly. 
AFG: So do you think England should be part of EU? 
JM: Oh, well, I'm not very keen on it myself. I mean I don't think we need a common currency when a lot of countries in Eastern Europe are going bankrupt. Like Germany, say. I think we should have trading and things with them but also, I think we've got a totally different judicial system, you know, with the Presumption of Innocence and all of that which doesn't exist in European Law. So if we do join we're going to have European Law forced on us, which has got no Presumption of Innocence and also no Habeas Corpus in quite a lot of European countries . . . And you can get a Warrant for Arrest signed by some judge in Romania which will be enforced in England without any investigation at all. 
AFG: Oh, how nice!
JM:   Carried off to a Romanian jail where you could sit for a year or two, so all of that I'm very against. AFG:  Do you see it as taking away the heritage? JM: Absolutely. And that's why I quite like having a Queen, you know, because it's a bit strange and irrational but it's also part of history.
AFG: I know. It's part of the culture. A person doesn't necessarily have to love the Queen but ....
JM: Yes, you don't have to. I don't even mind a few hereditary peers. They're being quite sensible; they're rather against the government.
AFG: So what's your main purpose for writing? Is it to escape all the imperfections of the world or to control things? 
JM: Well no, I think that if you can write, just like if you can do anything, if you can ski or play the piano, you've got to do it, haven't you? And also you try to make sense of the world you live in, and that's what the detective story is too, isn't it? That's the great thing about detective stories. It's imposing a solution and we live in a world of total chaos. Everything seems to be chaotic, and the detective comes along and says, "Now this is what happened and that's what happened," and the writer comes along and says, "This is how it all fits together." 
AFG: You said you enjoyed reading Dostoevsky, so which book would you say is your favourite?
JM: Oh, I don't know. I suppose The Brothers Karamazov.   The Possessed I like very much .... 
AFG:   The Possessed is unforgettable!
JM: It is. Extraordinary, isn't it? There's a wonderful one called Resurrection the girl is on trial and he's in the jury and she gets convicted and he goes across to find her in Siberia. AFG: I know that one; my sister gave it to me for Christmas some years ago.  I can tell you quite honestly, my sister is a fan of your work. Everybody is! Once you hand somebody a Rumpole book, they become hooked. 
JM: You're very kind.
AFG: No, it's really true. Finally, what do you enjoy doing most?
JM: Apart from sex? [He laughs] I enjoy finishing something. I think when you come to the end of a story you've written and that's it, you're on a high. I'm also on a high when I do these performances, you know when you stop and it's over, and you go home and drink Champagne out of the bottle in the car and eat sandwiches!
AFG: Well, thank you so much for this.  It was great. 
JM: Well, I so much enjoyed it.   

O