John Mortimer Books in Order

This generous selection gathers fourteen of Rumpole’s best cases, chosen from across three decades, and ends with the fragment of a new story found after Mortimer’s death, making it both a perfect introduction and a farewell to the Old Bailey hack.

Seven seasonal stories see Rumpole enduring family rituals, pantomimes and health farms while gratefully seizing any excuse to escape into a case, proving that crime and muddle never quite take a holiday at Christmas.

Based on his one‑man show, this book mixes verse, courtroom anecdotes and memories of family, clients, actors and judges, interleaving favourite English and American poems with stories that capture Mortimer’s love of eccentricity, law and talk.

Rumpole finds himself tangling with modern 'anti‑social behaviour' rules, defending neighbours and small‑time offenders caught by sweeping orders and surveillance, and wondering whether a cantankerous old barrister might be branded a nuisance under the new regime.

In one of his most topical outings, Rumpole defends a Pakistani doctor held without charge under new anti‑terror laws, challenging secret evidence and official panic while Hilda threatens to publish her own candid memoirs of life with him.

Mortimer’s biography of locomotive engineer and journalist Zerah Colburn follows a brilliant teenage prodigy of American railways through rapid success in Britain and the United States to scandal, addiction and an early death, charting both his achievements and self‑destruction.

A brief volume that pairs a Rumpole story with Mortimer’s own reflections on law, ageing and fairness, offering both a classic Old Bailey case and a personal meditation on how the scales of justice tilt in real life.

Idealistic Lucinda Purefoy joins a charity that pairs well‑meaning young women with ex‑prisoners and is assigned charming burglar Terry Keegan. Her attempts to reform him backfire spectacularly as she is drawn into burglary herself in this romantic social comedy.

At last telling the case he has dined out on for years, Rumpole looks back to his first major murder trial, defending a young man accused of shooting his father and a family friend, and shows how that victory shaped his career and marriage.

In a series of short, conversational pieces, Mortimer muses on what we really pass on to our children: a love of Shakespeare, a tolerance for chaos, good drink, stories and the confidence to be slightly disreputable in old age.

This collection opens with Rumpole marooned in a nursing home he suspects is up to no good, then returns him to court for cases about privacy, juries and slippery witnesses, blending cosy legal comedy with sharp digs at modern fashions in justice.

An older but scarcely subdued Rumpole confronts familiar villains, new judges and the odd Christmas ghost story, while stories like 'Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces' show past clients and mistakes circling back into his life.

Subtitled 'A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully', this memoir follows Mortimer through a hectic year of scriptwriting, festival appearances, parties and hospital visits, reflecting with rueful humour on ageing, politics and the pleasures he has no intention of giving up.

Edited by Lawrence Block, this anthology gathers crime stories set aboard cruise ships, where enclosed decks, ocean nights and shifting passenger lists give classic mysteries and thrillers a fresh, sea bound twist, including a contribution from John Mortimer.

In the final Rapstone novel, idealistic Labour candidate Ned Flitton fights a by‑election while being quietly manipulated by veteran operator Leslie Titmuss. The campaign becomes a sharp comedy about spin, image and the uneasy marriage of principles and power.

Felix Morsom, a mild novelist of quiet domestic dramas, is stunned to be accused first of fathering a child and then of murder. Fleeing into London’s underworld of the homeless, he discovers more drama and danger than he ever imagined writing about.

Published here on its own, the story that launched Rumpole sees him defending a young Timson accused of robbery, pitting his faith in juries and experience with wayward youth against the impatience of judges and more cautious colleagues.

Later in his career, Rumpole finds himself dealing with hospital scandals, missing children, prison conditions and the rights of suspects, all while trading barbs with Hilda and reflecting on mortality in this thoughtful collection of cases.

In this second volume of autobiography Mortimer recalls vivid encounters from his legal and literary life, from bizarre homicide trials to lunches with actors and politicians, arguing that even supposed monsters can be surprising, complicated friends.

Chosen by Mortimer himself, this sampler gathers his favourite Rumpole stories from the early collections, offering a compact introduction to the Old Bailey hack, his beloved Timson clients and his endless skirmishes with Hilda and the judges.

As editor, Mortimer assembles villains great and small from literature, selecting scenes and stories that showcase charming rogues, cold‑blooded killers and everything in between, with brief notes that highlight what makes each scoundrel memorable.

Here Rumpole faces some of his trickiest cases yet, from family feuds to miscarriages of justice, while a disciplinary hearing threatens his own career. The stories balance lively courtroom battles with the sobering prospect that the great defender could be silenced.

Mild, dutiful accountant Philip Progmire has spent a lifetime shadowed by his reckless school friend Dick Dunster. When Dunster accuses Philip’s admired boss of a wartime atrocity, Philip must choose between comfortable loyalty and an unsettling search for the truth.

Rumpole navigates haute cuisine, dubious doctors, surly trade unionists and a disastrous seaside holiday in this collection, proving that whether he is at a fashionable restaurant or on a cruise ship he remains happiest defending awkward clients in court.

Now a cabinet minister with a new wife, Leslie Titmuss returns to Rapstone determined to buy back his late wife’s country house and cement his social standing, only to find his plans snarled in an unpopular property development and local resentment.

Selected and introduced by Mortimer, this anthology gathers classic and contemporary crime tales that explore policing, punishment and the courts, offering a wide range of perspectives on what ‘law and order’ looks like in practice.

In these cases Rumpole confronts media scandals, political reputations, ambitious young barristers and changing social attitudes, testing whether the old virtues of cross‑examination, scepticism and jury trial can survive the so‑called age of miracles.

A short Rumpole tale in which talk of compulsory retirement swirls around chambers, forcing him to weigh his love of the courtroom against pressure to step aside, even as he battles to save another client from being written off too soon.

Despite the ominous title, this volume offers another run of Rumpole stories, from winter breaks gone wrong to wine‑tasting contests and official secrets, as he fends off suggestions that it may be time to retire from the bar.

A rare excursion to the other side of the courtroom finds Rumpole briefly acting for the Crown in one of several festive and wintry cases, yet he still cannot resist poking holes in official stories and standing up for the underdog.

This collection of short interviews and sketches presents politicians, writers, actors, churchmen and criminals in Mortimer’s gently probing style, allowing them to reveal their oddities and convictions while he adds only the lightest, wry commentary.

Tired of suburban London and her stale marriage, Molly Pargeter rents a Tuscan villa for the summer, only to find vanishing water, eccentric neighbours and a dead body in the empty swimming pool. Her search for the truth becomes a sun‑drenched detective story.

When socialist rector Simeon Simcox leaves his brewery fortune to Tory minister Leslie Titmuss instead of his sons, a mystery stretches back over decades of English village life. As Henry and Fred Simcox investigate, rivalries, class tensions and old betrayals surface.

These stories send Rumpole from familiar London courtrooms into more exotic jurisdictions, testing the ‘golden thread’ of English justice as he defends clients entangled in family loyalties, political intrigue and the old‑boy networks he loves to puncture.

Here Rumpole is firmly on the side of the accused, from suspected killers to petty fraudsters, relying on cross‑examination, instinct and a sceptical eye for authority as he exposes shaky evidence and legal humbug in a series of brisk tales.

The first volume of Mortimer’s autobiography revisits his solitary childhood in the countryside, his eccentric blind father, a patient mother and the long path from schoolboy communist and would‑be tap dancer to barrister and writer.

Six linked stories find Rumpole defending a shoplifting clergyman, actors at war backstage, wayward lovers and more, while grumbling about judges and wondering if his own forced retirement may be closer than he would like.

Drawing on early television scripts, this collection sees Rumpole tackle cases involving refugees, contested wills, expert witnesses and an unusually seasonal prosecution, all told in his sardonic voice as he needles the Crown and protects awkward clients.

Bored and sunburnt in Florida retirement, Rumpole seizes on a letter about a tricky murder case in England as his escape route. Back in London he must fight chambers politics and a hostile judge to prove he is not ready to hang up his wig.

In a hospital ward housed in an old Italian palazzo, two English patients wake beneath a vast fresco of Heaven and briefly believe they have died. As they talk, a Byronic adventurer and a scholarly writer compare the lives that brought them there.

This first collection introduces Horace Rumpole, Old Bailey barrister, defender of small‑time crooks and awkward innocents, as he battles judges, police and his own chambers in a run of witty courtroom stories set in 1970s London.

Mortimer’s autobiographical play follows a son growing up in the shadow of his brilliant, irritable and blind barrister father, tracing schooldays, law chambers and hesitant romances in a series of sharp, affectionate scenes about family, class and independence.

Julia’s tidy riverside life with her barrister husband begins to crack when her son glimpses a stranger in their boathouse and rumours surface about a beautiful dead girl downstream. Over one sweltering day, long‑suppressed secrets rise to the surface.

Middle aged solicitor Christopher Kennet discovers that his estranged son has been looting a client’s funds to finance a shady arms deal. His search for the boy drags him into London’s demi‑monde and forces a dangerous choice between duty and loyalty.

In 1944 a shy young recruit joins an army film unit in an English seaside town and watches a training exercise go fatally wrong. Convinced the sergeant’s death was no accident, he uncovers wartime rivalries and deceptions behind the camera.