Summer of a Dormouse [Paperback]

John Mortimer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 2001

'Charming, intelligent, cheerful, mellifluous, gossipy and wise. Buy it for Christmas' - Fay Weldon, "Mail on Sunday". John Mortimer recounts an extraordinarily full year in his life, which includes working on films, raising Lottery money for the Royal Court, chairing the committee that will decide on the new Trafalgar Square statue, having lunch with old lags in prison, and harrying New Labour. Public and private, poignant and frank, "The Summer of a Dormouse" is a vivid testimony to the pleasures and pains of old age.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Charming, intelligent, cheerful, mellifluous, gossipy and wise. Buy it for Christmas' - Fay Weldon, Mail on Sunday

About the Author

Sir John Mortimer was born in 1923. He created the character Rumpole of the Bailey, and wrote a bestselling trilogy of political novels featuring the politician Leslie Titmuss. He has also written many TV adaptations, including Brideshead Revisited and Cider with Rosie, and two volumes of autobiography. He lives in the Chilterns, near Henley.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (August 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140291121
• ISBN-13: 978-0140291124
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,200,444 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "From this day forth, thou shalt not be able to put on thine own socks.", October 18, 2008

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Summer of a Dormouse (Paperback)

Using this imagined pronouncement from God as an introduction to his third autobiography, author John Mortimer, barrister, playwright, novelist, and creator of the Rumpole series, muses on aging and the fact that time passes far more swiftly in old age than in youth. He expects the rest of his life to pass as quickly as "the summer of a dormouse." More a diary in book form than an autobiography with a series of strong controlling themes, Mortimer comments on recent events in his life, jumping from topic to topic, then backing up and revisiting those topics when events change or he learns something new.

The beginning of the book emphasizes his relationship with Franco Zeffirelli, for whom he wrote the screenplay for "Tea with Mussolini." He was fascinated by the casting and filming of that production, and his comments about Judy Dench, Joan Plowright, and Maggie Smith, all Great Ladies of British theatre, who shared billing in the film with the American Cher, add life and spice to the behind the scenes stories, especially when these actors appear nude at Zeffirelli's pool. He jumps quickly from this to his problems with his own broken leg, followed by leg ulcers that will not heal, and his experiments with a "black box," and electrical treatments which have a healing effect.

Soon he is onto the subject of running a campaign to rebuild the Royal Court Theatre, the problems he has had with government financing, with foundations, and with donors. His liberal political goals and his anti-establishment screeds add contemporary British political information to the autobiographical mix, and his reminiscences about growing up with his father, a blind barrister who was carefully tended to by Mortimer's solicitous mother, put his own pre-occupations with the family house and garden into perspective.

Unfortunately, his discussion about his father's blindness, the surgeries his father underwent, his homage to his patient and long-suffering mother, and his own problems and surgeries for detached retinas (apparently inherited) are virtually (if not, actually) lifted from his previous autobiography, Murderers and Other Friends. His story about visiting Sir John Gielgud with his wife and baby daughter Emily in her "pink carry-cot" is also virtually identical to his previous reminiscence from "Murderers and Other Friends." Though he discussed at length his relationship with playwright Harold Pinter in that book, he sees Pinter in this book and comments as if he's never seen him before! Fascinating for anyone who loves Rumpole and the Mortimer writings, this third "autobiography" is more like a free-floating reminiscence written by Mortimer for himself than it is for a wider audience of Mortimer fans. Mary Whipple

Murderers and Other Friends
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders
Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels)