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John Clifford Mortimer, the only child of Clifford and Kathleen May
Smith Mortimer, was born in Hampstead, London, on April 21, 1923. He was
educated at Harrow School (1937-40) and Brasenose College, Oxford (1940-42, BA
1947), and, like his father, he became a barrister in 1948 after serving as a
scriptwriter and assistant director for the Crown Film Units during World War
II. Mortimer's first novel,
Charade, was also published in 1948, and
within ten years he had published six more novels. His third radio play,
The Dock Brief, which was produced by the
BBC Third Programme in 1957, won the Italia Prize and was produced on the stage
in 1958, along with the first play he wrote for the stage,
What Shall We Tell Caroline? Among his
subsequent stage plays are
The Wrong Side of the Park (1960),
The Judge (1967),
A Voyage Round My Father (1970), and
Collaborators (1973). He also wrote
translations of Georges Feydeau's
A Flea in Her Ear (1966) and
Cat among the Pigeons (1969). Besides
writing for radio and television, Mortimer also wrote screenplays for
The Running Man (1963),
John and Mary (1969), and other films. |
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Unlike his playwright contemporaries, the “angry young men” of the
1950s, Mortimer came from an upper-class background, wrote about the middle
classes in decline, and followed established theatrical traditions. He is
better known for his one-act plays than his full-length ones, and he is perhaps
best known for his
"Rumpole of the Bailey" novels and television
series, and for his television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited. |
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Mortimer continued to work as a lawyer and became a Queen's Counsel
(1966) and Master of the Bench, Inner Temple (1975). In a celebrated case in
1970 he successfully defended the publishers of
Oz against pornography charges. |
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Mortimer married twice, first to author Penelope Fletcher Dimont (1949,
divorced 1971), and second to Penelope Gollop (1972-), and he had two children
with each. |
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More information about John Mortimer and his work may be found in the
following sources:
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series,
volume 21 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1981-);
Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 13
(Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co., 1982); and the
International Dictionary of Theatre, volume
2 (Chicago: St. James Press, 1992-96). |
