JOHN MORTIMER

The Country Barrister

By EDWARD LEWINE

Eye opener: I get up at 8 a.m. I have a bath and write until lunch. Before I begin writing, I have a glass of Champagne. It sets my brain racing, but I was on the radio once, and the interviewer asked me, “Are you having counseling for that?”
Always with him: My wheelchair. I have a broken tendon in my knee, and it can’t be operated on. It hasn’t made any difference, really, except I cannot go on walks, but then I never went on walks much.
Best recent gift: A Charles Dickens letter my wife gave me. He was editing Household Words magazine, and someone wrote to say you’ve lost my manuscript, and he wrote back to say: Really, I am far too busy to worry about people’s manuscripts. Please keep quiet.
Where he writes: My father, Clifford Mortimer, who was a barrister specializing in divorce and a great influence on me, built this house when I was 9. It’s at the edge of the Chiltern Hills, with 45 acres of woods behind it. The room where I write is the converted garage.
How he writes: I use a pen and write on long notebooks, I think you know them as legal notebooks. Then somebody tries to understand what I have put down and types it out.
Procrastination technique: Opening letters and replying to them.
On his desk: I have statuettes: Shakespeare, Freud, Oscar Wilde, Moses, Don Quixote and a bouncy Jesus on springs. There’s an ivory lady, which was used by Japanese women who didn’t like to undress for doctors. They took these statues and pointed to where it was hurting.
His favorite medium: I’ve written memoirs, stories, novels, plays and film and television scripts. The most satisfactory is for the theater. You can hear the audience’s reaction. The worst is film. Everybody interferes. The director thinks he can do better. His aunt has a good idea, the cleaning lady, everyone.
Obsolete item he won’t part with: I have an old, sort of barrel organ, which doesn’t work at all. It is empty, and I use it for keeping things in. It belonged to my father.
Item of clothing he can’t live without: I have a few rather nice suits, made by my tailor in Oxford, Ede & Ravenscroft. The people there think that life consists entirely of tailoring. They judge every politician by the cut of his coat.
Favorite gadget: The ring binder. Do you have those in America? I think it is a superb invention. I don’t think anything more useful has been invented since the discovery of the ring binder.
Three little pigs: We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and has always been very fond of pigs. Of course, they are for eating, which is why they are named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. You wouldn’t want to eat Rufus, Marcus and Esmeralda.
His view: The garden. It’s got two great wide borders going down to a distant statue, and it’s got two little woods in it and little dips, which were always there. And it’s got lots of strange, precious trees, cherry trees and other ornamental trees.
Perfect day: Get up in the country. Read good notices of my play in the paper. Then have all my family come down to see me.
Always in fridge: Bottles of white wine and Champagne, but I don’t drink rarefied wines, and I drink any sort of Champagne. I suppose you’d also find bits of food.
Fitness routine: Absolutely nil. I had a doctor who said, “Do you get breathless when you take exercise?” I said, “I wouldn’t know.”
What he wanted to be at age 5: An actor. I was taken to the theater a great deal, and we read Shakespeare aloud when I was young. Mostly, I wanted to show off.
Greatest self-indulgence: Performing on the stage, which I do from time to time. As it happened, I recently did a sort of play. I read bits of this and that with two actresses in a theater in Islington. I love making audiences laugh and timing jokes. I find that fascinating.
Musical accompaniment: The music in my play was performed by someone called Jon Lord, who used to be the keyboard player in a group called Deep Purple. I really didn’t know Deep Purple until he came to live nearby.
Evening routine: My wife and I have dinner about half-past 7 or 8. Then we go sit by the fire and watch the television. Bedtime is quite early, about 10:30 p.m.
By his bed: The radio. I listen to something called the BBC World Service. It goes all night and tells you everything that is happening.
Some like it hot: When I was a child, we didn’t have central heating, but we have it now, and I like it hotter even than you do in America. Visitors sweat and faint and take off their clothes.
Favorite place in the house: The kitchen. Everybody comes into the kitchen.
Favorite meal: I’ve rather given up eating. I don’t know why, and I regret it really. But I got to the age when I don’t like to have food in my mouth. I subsist on milky drinks the doctor prescribes. They come in sort of cardboard things. It’s very boring.
Biggest surprise: Well, I found a new son. I long ago had an affair with someone who had this boy and never told me. It all came out because someone wrote a book about me. My son is now 42 and the most incredibly nice person. He’s improved my life enormously.
Life as a barrister: As you know, English lawyers and judges wear wigs, which I loved. The criminals like it, too. No one wants to be sent to prison by someone wearing a T-shirt.
Mementos: I’ve a big picture of Leo McKern hanging up. He’s the actor who portrayed Rumpole. For me, he is Rumpole. He was perfect. I’ve a wall here beside my desk with pinned-up photos of me with John Gielgud and one of me with Laurence Olivier. Olivier did a film of my play “A Voyage Round My Father.” Gielgud did the film of my novel “Summer’s Lease.”
Favorite book: Charles Dickens’s “Bleak House.”
Rumpole’s legacy: I am very fond of him, really. He is the character in so many of my books, and he has a lot of me in him and of my father. But he hasn’t got much of a sex life. Rumpole’s whole sex life could fill one wet weekend.