John Mortimer, Barrister and Writer Who Created Rumpole, Dies at 85

John Mortimer, barrister, author, playwright and creator of Horace Rumpole, the cunning defender of the British criminal classes, died on Friday at his home in Oxfordshire, England. He was 85.

His death was confirmed by his agent, Katherine Vile, who said he had been ill for some time.

Mr. Mortimer is known best in this country for creating the Rumpole character, an endearing and enduring relic of the British legal system who became a television hero of the courtroom comedy.

But as a barrister in Britain, Mr. Mortimer came to be known in the 1960s as a defender of free speech and human rights for taking up cases that he said were “alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance.” He became a Queen’s Counsel just in time to tackle some of the civil rights cases that arose in Britain in that decade, all the while writing fiction, nonfiction, drama and comedy.

To read Rumpole, or to watch the episodes of the popular television series “Rumpole of the Bailey,” is to enter not only Rumpole’s stuffy flat or crowded legal chambers but also to feel the itch of his yellowing court wig and the flapping of his disheveled, cigar-ash-dusted courtroom gown.

Rumpole spends his days quoting Keats and his nights quaffing claret at Pommeroy’s wine bar, putting off the time that he must return to his wife, Hilda, more commonly known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.

Using his wit and low-comedy distractions, Rumpole sees that justice is done, more often than not by outsmarting the “old sweethearts” and “old darlings” of the bench and revealing the inner good — or at least the integrity and inconsistency — of the accused, including clans like the Timsons, whose crimes have kept generations of police officers busy.

Rumpole began as a BBC teleplay in 1975. The television series was produced in Britain by ITV, beginning in 1978. Once one has seen Leo McKern in the role, it is difficult to read the Rumpole stories without hearing his rich narration.

There is a certain predictability to the Rumpole stories. Mr. Mortimerhimself acknowledged in a 2006 interview with the The Guardian newspaper that Rumpole had not “developed” in more than 30 years of stories, television scripts and novels. “What keeps him going is that he can comment on whatever’s going on at the time,” he said.

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Mr. Mortimer continued to churn out the Rumpole adventures for many years. In “Rumpole and the Reign of Terror” (2006), Rumpole defends a suspect being held under Britain’s antiterrorism laws, giving Mr. Mortimer the opportunity to attack the broad-brush laws that he believed imperiled human rights.

He also adapted Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” for television, years after he became enthralled with the book as a young man. Somehow, despite the demands of his chosen careers — a “schizoid business of being a writer who had barristering as a day job,” he said — Mr. Mortimer also found time to pursue his lifelong interest in women, write for newspapers and keep up the garden nurtured by his father, Clifford Mortimer, whose outsize shadow remained with him all his life.

The elder Mr. Mortimer, who was known for his anger and harsh tongue, was a barrister who specialized in divorce petitions and wills. He lost his sight when John was a boy, but the blindness was never discussed or acknowledged, and the father carried on much as he had before. His wife would accompany him to court on the train, reading his legal briefs aloud en route so that he could keep up on his cases while often treating fellow commuters to detailed accusations of marital infractions.

Mr. Mortimer brought his father and their relationship to the stage in “A Voyage Round My Father,” which was eventually produced as a television movie in 1981, filmed at the family home, Turville Heath Cottage, near Henley on Thames, where the younger Mr. Mortimer grew up. Laurence Olivier played Clifford Mortimer, re-enacting his death in the same bed where the father died.

Mr. Mortimer eventually took over his father’s law practice. After trying his hand at novels, writing in the morning before court, he turned to radio scripts and had his first success in 1957 with “The Dock Brief,” broadcast by BBC radio. It was produced onstage years later.

His memoirs, including “Clinging to the Wreckage” (1982) and “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life” (1994), drop dozens of names of the theater and movie people he spent time with. There are trays upon trays of cocktails in his stories, and in later years interviewers often noted the presence of what one described as a “comfortably large Guinness that he is drinking for his health, even though it is still a long time until lunch.”

John Clifford Mortimer was born on April 21, 1923, in London to Clifford and Kathleen May Smith Mortimer. He attended Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1949 he married Penelope Fletcher, a writer, who came to the marriage with three children. They had two children, Sally and Jeremy, and divorced. He later married Penelope Gollop, or “Penny the Second,” as he has referred to her. Their children are Rosamond and Emily.

A heretofore-unknown son, Ross Bentley, born of a liaison with Wendy Craig, an actress, surfaced when Mr. Mortimer was in his 70s, and the author proclaimed himself delighted to welcome the son and new grandchildren to the family.

The existence of Ross Bentley came out in “The Devil’s Advocate,” an unauthorized biography by Graham Lord (2005), which asserted that Mr. Mortimer had known about the son all along. He denied this.

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An authorized biography, “A Voyage Round John Mortimer” (Viking), by Valerie Grove, was published in 2007.

As a defender of free speech, Mr. Mortimer championed the punk rock group the Sex Pistols, who released an album that was initially held to have an obscene title, as well as “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” by Hubert Selby Jr., a novel deemed unacceptable under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959.

He also appeared on behalf of the London edition of Oz magazine, which had produced a “school kids” edition written and illustrated by student readers. Among other items that offended the censors, the magazine depicted the head of the children’s character Rupert Bear grafted atop a body drawn by Robert Crumb, showing Rupert in a state of sexual excitement.

“Doing these cases,” he wrote, “I began to find myself in a dangerous situation as an advocate. I came to believe in the truth of what I was saying. I was no longer entirely what my professional duties demanded, the old taxi on the rank waiting for the client to open the door and give his instruction, prepared to drive off in any direction, with the disbelief suspended.”

In addition, he went to Nigeria to help in the defense of the playwright and poet Wole Soyinka on a criminal charge.

In recent years, despite poor health, Mr. Mortimer was a fixture at London parties and social gatherings. He also maintained an active writing schedule, frequently contributing opinion articles to London newspapers.

In “Murderers and Other Friends,” one of his memoirs, Mr. Mortimer recounted an interview for a radio program in which the questioner handed him the script of his own obituary, suggesting it might be “great fun” if he read it aloud for listeners. He refused. But he devoted a great deal of thought to death and dying.

He wrote about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child’s-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.

“Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls,” he wrote in “The Summer of a Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully” (2000). “The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn’t ready to appear ridiculous.”