Description
Book SynopsisHorace Rumpole - witty, eloquent, dishevelled and cynical - is one of fiction''s best-loved barristers-at-law. In these twenty classic tales, Rumpole battles through the Old Bailey, whether defending various members of an incompetent South London crime family, taking on haute-cuisine chefs and showfolk or mocking the pomposity of his own profession, all the while being held in check by his wife, Hilda: the wonderful, fearsome She Who Must Be Obeyed.
These collected stories, in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, are a definitive introduction to one of the wisest and wittiest characters in British comic writing and a reminder of what justice should really be about. With a new introduction by Sam Leith, former literary editor of the Daily Telegraph and contributor to the Evening Standard, Guardian and Spectator.
Trade ReviewI thank Heaven for small mercies. The first of these is Rumpole -- Clive James
Rumpole is simply one of the great fictional characters of modern English literature -- Marcel Berlin * Sunday Times *
The best mock heroic fatty since Falstaff -- Alan Coren
