Sir John Mortimer R.I.P.

The death of Sir John Mortimer reminded me of the pleasures I have had from his writing over the years. As a law student, my first encounter with his work was watching a double bill of his plays – one of which was the highly successful ‘Dock Brief’. At around the same time, he created Horace Rumpole, the barrister brilliantly brought to life by Leo McKern in the deservedly popular tv series. I watched pretty much all the Rumpole shows, and enjoyed them enormously.

In his professional life, Mortimer conducted many criminal cases, and although his writing covered a wide range of forms and themes, he often dealt with crime. I haven’t read so much of his non-Rumpole work, but I do like, and can warmly recommend as a nice dip-in compendium, The Oxford Book of Villains.

This is a compilation which dates back to 1992. It contains an assortment of extracts from literature; Crippen, naturally, makes an appearance in the book, and Mortimer comments in his introduction that the doctor was ‘kindly, modest and hospitable’.

Here is a flavour of Mortimer’s light, urbane style from that introduction: ‘Murderers form a long section in this book and I would recommend you not to read it all at once, but to vary it, perhaps with an occasional con man or a few seducers and cads…villains are those who have been cursed with an unreasonably high degree of optimism. Deterrent sentences have little effect, because the true villain never thinks he’s going to be caught. In the days when you could be hanged for stealing a handkerchief, handkerchiefs were hardly safe in anyone’s pocket.’