**Timothy West takes on the role of Rumpole in these two thrilling dramas featuring the wily magician of the Old Bailey at his implacable bestRumpole on Trial**Rumpole takes up the cause of young Bertie Timson, whose sole ‘crime’ seems to be playing football in the street. As he endeavours to defend our ancient freedoms, he becomes uneasy about exactly what his wife Hilda is up to in her continuing friendship with a high court judge.Going for Silk

Best of “The Strand Magazine”: 25 Years of Twists, Turns, and Tales from the Modern Masters of Mystery and Fiction“The Strand Magazine was always a giant voice in our corner of the literary world—and it still is today. This collection proves why—these unearthed gems and exciting new pieces shouldn’t be missed.” —Lee Child, bestselling author of the Jack Reacher seriesThis star-studded anniversary collection features over t...

Includes the plays The Wrong Side of the Park, Come as You Are and EdwinThis second volume of Oberon's new edition of John Mortimer's Collected Plays contains two full-length works, The Wrong Side of the Park and Edwin, and four short plays known collectively as Come As You Are and individually named after parts of London.Mill Hill concerns a dentist, his wife and a friend who likes to dress up as Sir Walter Raleigh for the purpose of making love.In ...

The comic, courageous, and corpulent Horace Rumpole reenters the fray in these seven fresh and funny stories in which the "great defender of muddled and sinful humanity" triumphs over the forces of prejudice and mean-mindedness while he tiptoes precariously through the domestic territory of his wife, Hilda-She Who Must Be Obeyed! With his passion for poetry, and a nose equally sensitive to the whiff of wrongdoing and the bouquet of a Château Thames Embankment, the lovable and disheveled Ru...

Bloomsbury presents 2SAS by Gavin Mortimer, read by John Hopkins.Drawing on recently declassified files and interviews with veterans, this is a fascinating history of Bill Stirling and 2SAS – pioneering founders of modern special forces.David Stirling is the name synonymous with the wartime SAS, but the real brains behind the operation was in fact Bill Stirling, David’s eldest brother. Bill was described in the SAS War Diary as a ‘man from the shadows’; it was an apt descri...

Nowadays life is not so simple that we can pursue just one way at a time. We are taught at school so many different ways that we cannot live in just one singular vision and give all our body and mind to just one aim. Today we have to work and pursue social lives out of work time and still try to fulfil aims and be satisfied within. We all can't get to the top, but be assured the top can't survive without other levels. They are no better and no worse. We don't all have natural abilities and...

“Deep time” is a term which attempts to capture temporal scales far beyond human comprehension. These are stretches of time epitomised by geological and cosmic scale processes, vast enough to make the entirety of human existence appear as little more than a footnote. The past few years have seen a boom in texts dedicated to the study of deep time, extending across a broad range of disciplines which fall markedly outside of its geological roots. These studies are unified by two ideas in par...

This first title in the popular mystery series by playwright and novelist John Mortimer features Horace Rumpole, an English barrister who stands before the jury with the flourish of a Shakespearean actor and the ingenuity of a Sherlock Holmes. Rumpole—expert on bloodstains and fingerprint forgery—who has a wit so dry and razor sharp that most of his duller colleagues miss its cutting edge entirely; who prefers, nay depends upon a daily nip of Pommeroy’s ordinary claret; who recites Matthew...

Rumpole defends Charles Hearthstoke against charges of keeping bawdy houses, in the form of his chain of massage parlors. The case has become quite a scandal since many customers were prominent members of the community and to Rumpole's astonishment, paid with credit cards. Guthrie Featherstone, who sought a massage for an injury now thinks that may be identified as one of the patrons and Rumpole cunningly arranges for him to preside at Hearthstoke's trial.

Our Horace Rumpole, the most traditional of traditionalists, defends a hippie-like school teacher on a drugs charge. Quite unexpectedly, he finds himself attracted to her and to her unusual lifestyle.

Rumpole again defends a member of the Timson clan on a charge of possession of stolen goods, namely, he is caught with a garage full of expensive wine. Rumpole is concerned that Timson's explanation that he purchased the wine from some unknown individual he met in a pub, will not go down well with Mr. Justice Graves, who has heard these stories many times before.

Rumpole must now defend a young member of the Timson family, an extended clan of petty thieves but who are otherwise decent South London rogues. Adding to Rumpole’s anxiety, his own son now appears to be acquiring some of the less respectable Timson family traits.