Forever Rumpole: The Best of the Rumpole Stories

The best of the Rumpole stories, in one bumper volume

Over a period of thirty years, beginning in the late 1970s, John Mortimer wrote around eighty Rumpole stories (as well as four Rumpole novels). During that period, the world changed dramatically but the old boy remained the same throughout- committed to defending the apparently indefensible, trusting of a jury, scornful of the law’s pomposities. He is truly one of the immortal comic characters in English fiction, alongside Mr Pickwick and Bertie Wooster.

Forever Rumpole offers the perfect introduction for anyone lucky enough to be coming to Rumpole for the first time. It contains seven stories chosen by the author himself in 1993 as his favourites to that point, together with a further seven from the later period. It also contains a fragment of a Rumpole novel the author had just started when he died. With an introduction by fellow-lawyer Ann Mallalieu, a close friend of Sir John, Forever Rumpole offers the very best of Horace Rumpole.