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Forever Rumpole
Forever Rumpole
Oct 26, 2024 6:34 PM

Author:John Mortimer

Forever Rumpole

Forever Rumpole - a hilarious new selection of the very best Rumpole stories by John Mortimer

Horace Rumpole lives alongside Mr Pickwick and Bertie Wooster as one of the immortal comic characters in English fiction. With his curmudgeonly wit, his literary allusions, his disdain for personal ambition and his lack of pomposity, he has, in the words of the Daily Telegraph, 'ascended to the pantheon of literary immortals'.

Forever Rumpole contains seven stories originally chosen by the author himself as his favourites, together with a further seven from the later period and the opening chapters of a Rumpole novel that Sir John was working on when he died in 2009. The book also includes a fascinating introduction by Ann Mallalieu, fellow lawyer and for many years Sir John's colleague in practice.

'Rumpole, like Jeeves and Sherlock Holmes, is immortal' P. D James, Mail on Sunday

'I thank heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole' Clive James, Observer

Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional trilogy about the inexorable rise of an ambitious Tory MP in the Thatcher years (Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets) has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.

Reviews

Aimee Bender’s debut short-story collection shows a writer ready to flirt with the fantastical. Largely concerned with the love lives of young metropolitans and desperate housewives, her cheerily bizarre scenarios give romance a fresh twist … Bender is a writer with a very incendiary turn of phrase.

—— Independent

These stories are unusual, certainly and they take you inside people’s feelings. Bender gets you to see the world in very particular ways. Beautifully done; you won’t forget this.

—— Evening Standard

Hilarious, deep and a little bit dirty

—— Harper's Bazaar

Many of the stories in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, begin with a premise just on the fringe of the familiar, then give it a tantalising twist ... Bender's stories are powered be voice - by pleasure of an electric simile and a restrained sauciness

—— New York Times Book Review

Fierce and true ... Fantastic!

—— Los Angeles Times Book Review

Makes you grateful for the very existence of language

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Bender has hit the ground running with this debut

—— Entertainment Weekly

Magical … a collection of mesmerisingly imaginative tales

—— Bella Magazine

Colours and landscapes are evoked in language that, at once lush and direct, is in itself a pleasure and a reminder that Malouf is also a poet of considerable talent

—— Aamer Hussein , Independent

His writing here has a fine descriptive delicacy and sensory exactness that act as guarantees of the stories' truth and the authenticity of the experiences they embody

—— Tom Deveson , Sunday Times

Malouf deals with both the vast and the seemingly unimportant... He does it with biting wit, elegance and a rare, uncluttered honesty

—— Chris Dolan , Saturday Herald

Poignant and wonderful story...concentrates, without effort, all Malouf's themes...it needs to be read

—— Prospect

Julian Barnes reminds us what an exhilarating experience it can be to read a really good critic.

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph

A compulsive page-turner.

—— Tim Adams , Observer

Barnes’s passion for his writers is infectious.

—— Ion Trewin , Sunday Express

Blissfully intelligent.

—— Roger Lewis , Financial Times

The temptation to turn away is powerful, but the rewards for resisting it are considerable. These essays combine a scholarly breadth of knowledge with a powerful sense of the absurdities of the creative life.

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph

Through the Window is a wonderful and very interesting collection of essays that rewards close, and also measured, reading.

—— Brendan Wright , Nudge
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