John Mortimer
| Sir John Mortimer CBE QC |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Born | John Clifford Mortimer 21 April 1923 Hampstead, London, United Kingdom |
| Died | 16 January 2009 (aged 85) Turville Heath, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author |
| Nationality | British |
| Education |
Dragon School Harrow School |
| Alma mater | Brasenose College, Oxford |
| Notable works |
A Voyage Round My Father Rumpole of the Bailey |
| Notable awards |
Queen's Counsel (1966) CBE (1986) Knighthood (1998) |
| Spouse |
Penelope Mortimer (1949-1971; divorced) Penelope Gollop (1972-2009; his death) |
| Children | Sally Silverman, Jeremy Mortimer (with Mortimer) Emily Mortimer, Rosie Mortimer (with Gollop) Ross Bentley (with actress Wendy Craig) Four stepdaughters |
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author.
Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and Clifford Mortimer, a barrister who became blind in 1936, when he hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi, but still pursued his career. Clifford's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.
John Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, in Oxford, and Harrow School, where he joined the Communist Party forming a one-member cell. Originally Mortimer intended to be an actor; his lead role in the Dragon's 1937 production of Richard II, gained glowing reviews in The Draconian, and then a writer, but his father persuaded him against it advising: "My dear boy, have some consideration for your unfortunate wife ... [the law] gets you out of the house."
At seventeen, he went up to Brasenose College, Oxford where he read law, though he was actually based at Christ Church because the Brasenose buildings had been requisitioned for the war effort. In July 1942, at the end of his second year, he was asked to leave Oxford by the Dean of Christ Church, after romantic letters to a Bradfield College sixth-former, Quentin Edwards, later a QC, were discovered by the young man's housemaster. He graduated from Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts degree in October 1943.
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