A Voyage Round John Mortimer by Valerie Grove

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Like Alan Bennett, John Mortimer is a most unusual national treasure. Owlish and never in robust health, he has nevertheless managed to combine a notable career in law with a prolific output as a writer, somehow also managing to maintain a colourful sideline as a ladies' man and gifted raconteur. Valerie Grove has done a splendid job of unravelling the myths that her subject has spun around himself. She reveals his selfdoubts? "I don't have great periods like Picasso" ? and notes that a man who has appeared to glide through life in a state of gilded grace actually gets up at 3am to meet deadlines.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Novelist, playwright and barrister John Mortimer has led an extraordinarily rich life, privately and professionally, much of it in the public eye. His own writings, from the play "A Voyage Round My Father" to the memoirs "Clinging to the Wreckage" and "Murderers and Other Friends", have given his many fans plenty of insights. But now for the first time a biographer has had full access to Mortimer, his circle of friends and colleagues, and their diaries and letters. The result is a riveting account of the life of one of the great figures of our time. "A Voyage Round John Mortimer" is revealing of many aspects of Mortimer's legal and literary career, from his first attempts at writing novels and the early help he offered his barrister father through to the great triumphs of Rumpole and the Oz trial.