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The Summer of a Dormouse

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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 they 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 Mortimer reminiscence written for Mortimer himself than it is for a wider audience of Mortimer fans. n Mary Whipple

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

Everybody and their brother and sister, which includes Gertrude Stein, of course, seems to be penning memoirs. A caveat to the form practiced at its best: The memoir of a man nearly eighty should be read quickly. In part to raise demand - if the recounting is revisited in prose artfully and summons forth a brilliant life - for a return engagement of cottage industriousness from the un-retiring pensioner, and chiefly because the best memoirs offer frothy recollections and musings which naturally propel alacrity.

In the case of "The Summer of a Dormouse" by John Mortimer, the episodic visits taken around the world and within the circle of the celebrated novelist, Queen's Counsel, playwright, knight (bearing a unique coat of arms), and "champagne socialist" end all too soon. We need some levity to dispel the infirmities of old age, septuagenarian John Mortimer advises.

The adapter of "Brideshead Revisited," Mortimer compares his life to scriptwriting's pace, "scenes get shorter and the action speeds up towards the end." And sped-up indeed it is for Mortimer. He plays the strolling scribe and player, from the "Chiantishire" to San Francisco and Watford to Antibes, respectively. He loosely adapts Franco Zeffirelli's life in "Tea with Mussolini" and Laurie Lee's (with whom he worked in government films during WWII) "Cider with Rosie"; for the former he is whisked off to Cinecitta - enclave of la dolce vita for the film industry set.

Back in London, Sir John chairs the Royal Court Theatre's - presenter of George Bernard Shaw and John Osborne - rebuilding. Despite stupefying behind the scrim skirmishes, he soldiers on through meetings with overly sensitive playwrights of the cut-off-your-nose-in-spite-your-face variety. Finally, Mortimer's common sense prevails and the theatre gets built. The redoubtable David Hare, none the worse for bygone artistic differences, writes a play for the new stage.

Goaded by a politico hostess to "have a go" at [then] Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw, this former barrister uses a lunch encounter to argue the defense of civil liberties and Magna Carta, and he hosts another lunch, a fundraiser on behalf of prison reformation, where a CEO is drilled over the company's annual report by a major stockholder--a convict--at the prison's groaning board. He also dispatches his opinion to the newspaper on the crisis in farming, easily deducible from the vantage point of his countryside home that is roundly ignored by Tony Blair's New Labour government. In fact, Mortimer questions whether "the promised land of a Labour Britain" looks or acts any different from its Conservative Party predecessor.

Mortimer recalls, from his youth, the Shakespearean passages his father quoted and conjures the blinded in middle age, intrepid, yet reliant for personal matters such as daily dressing on his wife (Mortimer's own Shavian, strong-willed mother), barrister that mirrors Mortimer's own age-related frailties - from use of a wheelchair to not being able to put on socks anymore - to wistful effect. A tinge is likewise evoked during a visit to an old artist friend with late-stage Alzheimer's who has, nevertheless, recapitulated a radiant painting he had done twenty years earlier, "this was only an echo, something left stranded on the beach after the sea had retreated."

Famed as Mortimer is for his Rumpole of the Bailey series, he acknowledges that when filling up his writing pads he draws more interest from failure than success. Coincidence, perhaps fate, abounds in his lifetime, and he attends the funeral of his first wife, Penelope, with his wife, Penny (for Penelope), surrounded by children of the first marriage and his teenaged daughter from the later union. The couple of years chronicled in this memoir include an eclectic cast of friends and colleagues: Muriel Spark, Neil Kinnock, Stephen Daldry, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness, Lord Richard Attenborough, Joss Ackland, and twins, Vicky and Jackie, who married Deep Purple band members. When an elegiac tone sets in, as birthdays come and friends die, Mortimer says the "cure is to be found among the living..." And so it is.

In the interim between another trip down memory's lane, once past the surfeit of this writer's well-lived life is consumed, the reader can go back to John Mortimer's catalogue of autobiography (now in three published books), novels, and plays. Then, with delight still at the fingertips, perhaps the champagne-tippling dormouse will serve up yet another rich and textured morsel from a gracious and blessedly prolonged summer for Sir John Mortimer, Esquire.

SUMMER OF A DORMOUSE takes it's title from Byron who said when one subtracts sleeping, eating and other personal maintenance one has about as much time to be productive as the summer of a dormouse. Of course Lord Byron himself was quite productive until he was bled dry by leeches says John Mortimer whose wife gave him a ring with an engraved dormouse on his last birthday.

DORMOUSE is Mortimer's third installment in his autobiography (the official one, Rumpole is unofficial). In his earlier entries (CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE, MURDERERS AND OTHER FRIENDS) he covered his childhood, life with wife number one (Penny) and wife number two (Penelope) as well as his writing and legal career through age 65 or so. In DORMOUSE, Mortimer continues the tale covering recent events in his seventies (with flashbacks).

Mortimer has not slowed down very much though he is blind in one eye and forced to use wheeled conveyences through air port terminals (sometimes at the risk of life and limb) as he whizzes around the globe on various book-signing tours and other business trips. For instance, during the 1990s he was busy writing the screen play for the film 'Tea with Mussolini' -- an autobiographical account of Franco Zefirelli's boyhood in wartime Italy starring Dames of the British Empire Judy Dench and Maggie Smith as well as Lady Joan Plowright. As a result of his involvement, he has been privy to the behind the scenes antics of the old gals. Seems these pillars of the theatre were caught nude in Franco Zefirelli's swimming pool one afternoon. (I knew Dench couldn't possibly be as dull as her biographer suggested!!)

Mortimer has literary flashbacks, amazing tales to convey, and engages in a bit of reflection as he faces "Timor mortis" which he says becomes rather acute after age 75. During the course of his book, several old friends and his first wife Penelope exit the stage. From time to time he feels like throwing in the towel himself but something always seems to come along set him going again. For example, the ulcer on his leg hasn't healed and after two years it seems to have become a permanent part of his anatomy when he encounters two twins who suggest he try an alternative approach to healing.

From Mortimer's perspective some politicians seem bent on destroying England, so he and wife Penny do what they can to stall the barbarians at the gate. As friends of the Kinnocks, the Mortimers find much to take on including the movement by the "politically correct" to deny accused rapists access to cross-examination of the accuser. Sometimes the local populace is with the Mortimers and sometimes not. For example, they are not opposed to fox-hunting--which earns them the enmity of extremist animal lovers who send very bad things through the post.

From the scuba diver scooped up and dropped on a blazing forest fire which leads to an insurance battle over the cause of death, to the lightening struck movie star with a melted phone receiver in his hand, to wife Penny's escapades in Cuba with headless cattle, not much escapes Mortimer's notice. On the other hand, he's not above burning his trousers and radio in the rubbish pile or forgetting the name of the actor he just saw on tv for whom he is writing script. Like Rumpole, Mortimer continues the fight against premature adjudication.

Mortimer, with what I'm sure was a subtle twinkle in his eye, had the words Aedes Gliris -- Latin for "Summer of a Doormouse" -- stitched onto his shirts, as a motto for a happy life that in retrospect passed quickly.

This book made me smile very often, with its understated hilarity and reminiscences of adventures that would exhaust most men, never mind a man of 80 years. Mortimer celebrates his good fortunes in art, in the law, and in love. We learn that women friends had dubbed him "the thinking woman's crumpet."

I enjoyed this small book, but then I should confess to having read all the Rumpole stories many times. I see Mortimer as full of joy, self-effacing, and very wise at this time of his life.

May he write much more.

John Mortimer is a talented writer with true English wit. However, The Summer of the Dormouse falls short. Some of his episodes were previously told in Clinging to the Wreckage. Seventy odd years of life is too long to have repeats.

John Mortimer is a wonderful English author. My husband is a great fan of his work. I read of this book this summer in England and when I returned home I rushed to buy it.
My husband hated it! He said he had already read most of the stories in other works. The author also gives his opinion on the wonderful Labor Party in England. His mother should have taught him not to discuss politics in polite society.
It is really a dreadful book. Only useful as a door stop on a windy day.

I read a little of this book and then found that I just didn't want to waste my time reading any more. And it sounded so interesting in the NYTimes review! I feel this book is pure garbage. He seems to be under the impression that every thought and memory which flits through his head is of great value. Just as power corrupts, fame insufflates the ego - unless you have the supreme wisdom to resist it. I read halfway thru another book called something like 'the delights of aging'. It was just as disappointing. And I'm aging. Are there any books which genuinely make you believe aging isn't as bad as it feels? Like that music isn't as bad as it sounds? Maybe self-delusion is the only way to joyfully tolerate the whips and scorns. Maybe that's Mortimer's real message here - message by example.