Penelope Mortimer
| Penelope Mortimer | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Penelope Ruth Fletcher 19 September 1918 Flintshire, Wales, UK |
| Died | 19 October 1999 (aged 81) Kensington, England, UK |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Spouse(s) |
Charles Dimont (1937–1949, divorce) John Mortimer (1949–1971, divorce) |
| Children |
Caroline Mortimer (with Dimont) Jeremy Mortimer (with Mortimer) Madelon Dimont Burk (with Dimont) Julia Mankowitz () Deborah Rogers () Sally Silverman (with Mortimer) |
Penelope Ruth Mortimer (née Fletcher, 19 September 1918 – 19 October 1999) was a Welsh-born English journalist, biographer, and novelist. She wrote a semi-autobiographic novel in 1962 entitled The Pumpkin Eater, which was turned into a 1964 film, for which Anne Bancroft was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as "Jo Armitage", a character based on Mortimer herself.
Mortimer was born Penelope Ruth Fletcher in Rhyl,Flintshire (now Denbighshire), Wales, the younger daughter of Amy Caroline Fletcher and the Rev A. F. G. Fletcher, an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also abused her sexually.
Mortimer later wrote of her father: "I think he was a clergyman for one reason only; there was nothing else!, as Nellie Fletcher's second son, he could possibly have been. As a small boy, bullied and teased by six sisters and four brothers, he sat under the nursery table chanting 'Mama, papa, all the children are disagreeable except me', to the tune of Gentle Jesus'."
Her father frequently changed his parish and she attended numerous schools. She was educated across the country, at Croydon High School, the New School, Streatham, Blencathra, Rhyl, Garden School, Lane End, St Elphin's School for Daughters of the Clergy, and the Central Educational Bureau for Women. She left University College, London, after only one year.
She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937 and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer. She had two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler. She met the barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949, on the day her divorce from Dimont became absolute. Together they had a daughter and a son, Jeremy Mortimer. Their relationship, said to have been happy at first, soon grew stormy.
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