There were days when the Father could see and days when the Father could not see in this tale seen through the eyes of the perennial Son as viewed from the trellis surrounded, as if for protection, by an enormous garden. The tale grows in turns and twists upon allusion and reversals, all crisply dramatic and really not so comical as at first glance. We see the son in his childhood with a friend named Reigate and a teacher named Noah, then as a man who has been told all he is meant to feel sudden freedom growing up, the end of dependence the step into the sunlight when no one is taller than...

Recounting his solitary childhood in the English countryside, the author presents affectionate portraits of his remote parents - an increasingly unconventional barrister father, whose blindness must never be mentioned, battling earwigs in the mutinous garden, and a vague and endlessly patient mother.

Horace Rumpole, whose legal triumphs, plundering sorties into the 'Oxford Book of English Verse' and less-than-salubrious hat are celebrated here in this omnibus edition which includes 'Rumpole of the Bailey', 'The Trials of Rumpole' and 'Rumpole's Return'.

Rumpole and the Primrose Path - six hilarious crime capers starring John Mortimer's iconic character '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 Rumpole was last seen in his hospital bed after his sudden collapse in court. Now our hero finds himself in the Primrose Path nursing home - or a hospice as he persists in describing it. Things aren't looking good for Rumpole - until suddenly he begins to sense there's something wrong with the place, and all his intelligence...

Rumpole and the Reign of Terror - a delightful novel starring John Mortimer's iconic barrister '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 Justice isn't blind - it's just a little short sighted and weak around the knees ... Just in case Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders gave fans the impression that the Great Defender was resting on his laurels, his new case sends him at full sail into our panicky new world. Rumpole is asked to defend a Pakistani doctor who has...

The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole - a delightful novel starring John Mortimer's iconic character 'One of the great comic creations of modern times' Evening Standard ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. Not that Hilda agrees, of course, but she's too busy completing her memoirs to dissuade him from taking an interest when one of the Timson children is...

Rumpole's idea of a good Christmas is exchanging presents with She Who Must Be Obeyed before settling round the fire at Froxbury Mansions for the traditional turkey with all the trimmings. But, as Rumpole will soon discover, the criminal fraternity never rests.

When Simeon Simcox, a socialist clergyman, leaves his entire fortune not to his family but to the ruthless, social-climbing Tory MP Leslie Titmuss, the Rector's two sons react in very different ways. Henry, novelist and former 'angry young man' turned grumpy old reactionary, decides to fight the will and prove their father was insane. Younger brother Fred, a mild-mannered country doctor, takes a different approach, quietly digging in Simeon's past, only to uncover an entirely unexpected explanation for the legacy. An exquisitely drawn saga of ancient rivalries and class struggles, featuring a...

Clinging to the Wreckage is the first part of John Mortimer's acclaimed autobiography. Here he recounts his solitary childhood in the English countryside, with affectionate portraits of his remote parents - an increasingly unconventional barrister father, whose blindness must never be mentioned, battling earwigs in the mutinous garden, and a vague and endlessly patient mother. As a boy dreaming of a tap-dancing career on the stage and forming a one-boy communist cell at boarding school, his father pushes him to pursue the law, where Mortimer embarks on the career that was to inspire his...

Horace Rumpole - witty, eloquent, dishevelled and cynical - is one of fiction's best-loved barristers-at-law. In these twenty classic tales, Rumpole battles through the Old Bailey, whether defending various members of an incompetent South London crime family, taking on haute-cuisine chefs and showfolk or mocking the pomposity of his own profession, all the while being held in check by his wife, Hilda: the wonderful, fearsome She Who Must Be Obeyed. These collected stories, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, are a definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters...