John Mortimer sees himself as a pretty traditional sort of playwright, in whom traditional influences are at work (Dickens, Chekhov, the Russian novelists), and feels that his admiration for the plays of Pinter and Simpson, the ideas of Osborne and Wesker, does not imply any very close kinship. Many of his critics, particularly those unequivocally, left of centre, have tended to agree with him, suggesting that though on a number of occasions he has been bracketed with 'new dramatists' … he is really an 'old dramatist' in disguise, writing 'in almost every respect typical Shaftesburiana', as a reviewer in Encore put it in connection with The Wrong Side of the Park.

Now there is something in this: certainly The Wrong Side of the Park in particular is nearer the sort of play which a British dramatist would be writing now if no real challenge to the supremacy of Rattigan...