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Dateline: 16th January, 2009
Sir John Mortimer (1923 - 2009) Sir John Mortimer, barrister, novelist, screenwriter and playwright, died today after a long illness. He was 85. Born in Hampstead and educated at Harrow and Brasenose, Oxford, he was called to the bar in 1948 but had always been keen on writing. During the second world war he worked for the Crown Film Unit as a scriptwriter for many propaganda films. His first novel, Charade, published in 1948, was based on his experiences. Getting up early to write before going into court, he went on to write Like Men Betrayed (1953) which he adpated for radio and it was performed on the BBC Light Programme in 1955. His first actual play was The Dock Brief which was broadcast, starring Michael Hordern, in 1957 on the Third Programme. It was subsequently televised and then, in 1958, performed in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric, Hammersmith, later transferring to the Garrick. His greatest stage success, however, was the autobiographical A Voyage Round My Father which first appeared on radio in 1963 and then on television in 1969 (starring Mark Dignam). It was first staged at the Greenwich Theatre in 1969, again with Dignam, and a year later moved to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, where Alec Guinness starred. In 1981 it was again televised with Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates. The creation for which he is best known, however, is Horace Rumpole who first appeared in a BBC Play for Today, Rumpole of the Bailey, in 1975 in which Leo McKern played Horace Rumpole. This proved so popular that Thames Television produced seven series of six episodes each between 1978 and 1992. A two-hour show, Rumpole's Return, was broadcast in 1980, between the second and third series. In September/October 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast four new 45-minute Rumpole dramatisations with Timothy West in the title role. He adapted John Fowles' The Ebony Tower, starring Laurence Olivier, for Granada in 1984 and also wrote the script, based on the autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, for the 1999 film Tea with Mussolini. From 2004, he worked as a consultant for the reality show Judge Judy and the US comedy television show Boston Legal.
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