London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
And today, April 22nd,
we raise a glass.
A day late but it doesn’t matter.
A day late because on April 21st in 1923, in Hampstead, at number 7
The Pryors,
was born one of the great characters of modern London.
Not just a writer.
Not just a barrister.
Not just a wit.
A one-man institution.
Sir John Mortimer.
Now Hampstead does this sort of thing rather well.
Producing people who seem to belong not just to a profession but to a whole tradition.
And Mortimer belonged to several.
The law. The theatre.
The great English line of civilized dissent.
He was the only child of a formidable father.
A distinguished barrister.
A man who wrote the standard work on probate law.
A man who, in later life, went blind but carried on as if eyesight were a minor inconvenience, like a drizzle that might clear up later.
That father becomes immortal,
of course, in Mortimer’s great autobiographical piece, A Voyage Round My Father.
If you know it, you’ll know the tone.
Affectionate, amused, slightly exasperated, and very, very English.
Mortimer himself.
Not quite the model pupil.
The Dragon School in Oxford first. Then Harrow.
Which he never missed an opportunity to disparage.
He found it too sporty, too conventional.
Not nearly enough room for the imagination.
So what does he do?
Forms a one-man Communist cell.
You’ve got to love that.
One man. One revolution.
Oxford follows.
Supposed to read law.
Under pressure from his father.
But really he’s writing poems, dressing flamboyantly,
mixing with aesthetes,
and getting into what one might politely call… situations.
One such situation ends with a small scandal and his departure from the university.
Exit, stage left.
But here’s the thing about Mortimer.
He always lands on his feet.
Called to the bar in 1948.
Joins his father’s chambers.
And there begins one of the great double lives.
By day, the law.
Divorce, probate,
the human wreckage that washes up in courtrooms.
By early morning,
before the day begins, the writing.
A novel a year at one point.
Plays. Radio. Television.
Film scripts.
The pen never stops.
And the life?
Chaotic. Crowded. Competitive.
A household full of children, stepchildren, noise, tension.
A marriage that is both combustible and creatively fruitful.
Out of that comes some of the sharpest writing about domestic life you’ll ever encounter.
But then, the pivot.
He takes silk.
Becomes a QC.
Or, as he himself put it,
he “took to crime.”
From that point on,
he decides he will only defend. Never prosecute.
The system, he feels, is a maze. And the job of the advocate is to guide the accused out of it.
Preferably with wit.
Preferably with style.
And preferably without ever taking the whole thing too seriously.
Which does not always go down well.
At one point, in a desperately dull VAT case, he sympathizes with the jury for their boredom.
The judge reprimands him and reminds everyone that the purpose of the English judicial system is not, in fact, to amuse Mr Mortimer.
Though you feel it might have been improved if it had been.
And then, in 1975, the stroke of genius.
Rumpole.
Horace Rumpole of the Bailey.
Played by Leo McKern. Dishevelled.
wine-loving.
cigar-smoking.
defender of the underdog.
scourge of pomposity.
champion of the principle that it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted.
Rumpole is, of course, Mortimer. Or at least the version of Mortimer he most enjoyed being.
It made him famous.
Properly famous.
Fifty stories. Television. Books.
A character who walks straight into the national bloodstream and takes up residence there.
But alongside the fiction,
the real battles.
Free speech.
Obscenity trials.
Books, magazines,
works hauled into court on the charge that they might “corrupt and deprave.”
Mortimer stands up,
wig slightly askew, voice high, amused, devastating.
And says, in effect, nonsense.
He defends Last Exit to Brooklyn. He defends the Oz magazine.
He defends the Little Red Schoolbook.
He defends things that many people would rather not have defended.
Because he believes the alternative is worse.
Because once you start banning things, where do you stop?
It’s a very English kind of libertarianism.
Rooted not in theory but in a deep suspicion of authority getting above itself.
And all the while, the writing continues.
Plays. Adaptations. Memoirs.
Wonderful memoirs.
Clinging to the Wreckage.
Murderers and Other Friends.
The Summer of a Dormouse.
Titles that tell you exactly what you’re in for.
A mixture of self-deprecation, anecdote, memory, and that underlying melancholy.
Because for all the success, Mortimer worried.
He had a line from Chekhov lodged in his mind.
The sense that he would never be Tolstoy.
Never be quite… great enough.
Which is rather touching.
Because what he was,
was something else.
He was loved.
And in the end,
that’s what he wanted.
He once answered a questionnaire. Greatest weakness?
“Wanting people to like me.”
Which, if we’re honest, is not the worst weakness to have.
Ok, a couple of personal stories. I think most of us, when we guide the Inns of Court Walk, show our walkers where John Mortimer’s chambers were. There in Middle Temple. I go back far enough, I can remember when his name was the second one from the top. The names are listed according to seniority. So he was the second most senior barrister in that set of chambers. And then one day his name went to right to the bottom of the list. And then some. That didn’t mean he’d been demoted. It meant that he was, to use the academic term, emeritus. He’d pretty much retired. But he’d held onto his office there. And that office is hallowed ground. Because a lot of the Rumpole stories were written there.
And my other favourite story about John Mortimer… The BBC interviewed him shortly before he died. He was very old. But still tack sharp. Now it’s a commonplace in this country that when the police start to look very boyish, very young, you know you’re getting on. John Mortimer said, “listen, at my great age even the High Court Judges look boyish.”
John Mortimer died in 2009.
Died in the countryside he loved. Having written, argued, entertained, provoked, and amused for the better part of a century.
And Hampstead?
Still there.
Still producing its characters.
Still holding its stories.
Including that boy born on April 21st, 1923, who went on to become the best playwright who ever defended a murderer at the Old Bailey.
So please do, raise a glass to John Mortimer. To the immortal memory.
And maybe we take our leave of him by airing out three of his deservedly famous remarks.
First, “I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”
And there’s Rumpole’s immortal name for his wife Hilda, “she who must be obeyed.”
That line marries beautifully with my favourite Rumpole line of all, “the English are best at adversity, not prosperity.
So appropriately dishevelled here, Happy belated Birthday, John Mortimer. You’re much missed.
And that’s all for now.
That’s your daily London fix on this fine April day.
See you tomorrow.
When for sure we’ll be back with another story. Another corner. Another life.
Because you don’t just look at London.
You see it.
And finally, you wonder at it. And take delight in it.