Джон Мортимер «The Collected Stories of Rumpole»

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Автор Джон Мортимер

JOHN MORTIMER

The Collected Stories of Rumpole

Edited by CHLOE CAMPBELL

with an introduction by SAM LEITH

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

Introduction

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RUMPOLE

Rumpole and the Younger Generation

Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade

Rumpole and the Man of God

Rumpole and the Showfolk

Rumpole and the Expert Witness

Rumpole and the Spirit of Christmas

Rumpole and the Boat People

Rumpole and the Genuine Article

Rumpole and the Last Resort

Rumpole and the Blind Tasting

Rumpole and the Judge’s Elbow

Rumpole’s Last Case

Rumpole and the Tap End

Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation

Rumpole and Portia

Rumpole à la Carte

Rumpole on Trial

Rumpole and the Model Prisoner

Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces

Rumpole and the Primrose Path

Acknowledgements

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RUMPOLE

John Mortimer (1923–2009) 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 Modern Classics, together with his autobiography, 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. Sir John, who was knighted in 1998 for his services to the arts, died in January 2009.

Sam Leith is the former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph, and the author of the novel The Coincidence Engine and three non-fiction books, of which the most recent was You Talkin’ To Me? – Rhetoric From Aristotle to Obama. He writes regularly for the Evening Standard, Guardian, Prospect and the Spectator.

Introduction

‘Being Horace Rumpole in his sixties, still slogging round the Old Bailey with sore feet, a modest daily hangover and an aching back was certainly no great shakes, but who else could I be?’ (p. 167).

Such is the situation of John Mortimer’s greatest creation. Who else could Rumpole be, but a hungover Old Bailey Hack in his sixties? His own account tells us he was born some time around 1910, but he actually drew his first breath, already in his sixties and, as it were, pre-crumpled, in December 1975, when ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’ went out on the BBC’s long-running TV series Play For Today.

Rumpole, then, had his first incarnation on the small screen. In fittingly Rumpolian fashion, he got the second choice of name and third choice of actor. Originally, he was to have been called ‘Rumbold’ (a decision hastily modified after the discovery that there already existed, in Guildford, a barrister called Horace Rumbold). And though he was brought brilliantly to life by Leo McKern, his creator had originally eyed Michael Hordern (too busy) and Alastair Sim (too dead) for the part.

The many prose stories that Mortimer went on to write, of which you hold in your hands a selection of the best, are more than just TV spin-offs, however. They have an independent, and enduring, life. McKern’s stentorian Rumpole on the small screen may have defined the character in the public mind, but what we find in the stories is a subtly different creature: camper, more feline, more Mortimeresque.