Best known for his Rumpole of the Bailey television series, John Clifford Mortimer (born 1923) was a noted and prolific writer of novels, stories, and plays for radio, stage, television, and film, as well as a translator, interviewer, critic, editor, and lawyer.

John Clifford Mortimer was born to Clifford Mortimer, a barrister, and Kathleen May (Smith) Mortimer in London, England, on April 21, 1923. As an only child he grew up in an isolated, adult-centered environment. By the time Mortimer was 13 his father was totally blind and his mother devoted herself to leading him about London's law courts and their own Oxfordshire garden. Mortimer read novels and poetry to his father, who in turn told him stories and took him to the theater.

At his progressive prep school at Harrow and eventually at Brasenose College, Oxford, Mortimer mingled with England's upper classes and was encouraged to indulge his love of theater...