BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Rumpole's creator Mortimer dies Rumpole's creator Mortimer dies Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory. Sir John Mortimer's life in pictures Dramatist and author Sir John Mortimer, who created enduring character Rumpole of the Bailey, has died aged 85 after a long illness. Sir John, who began working as a barrister in the 1940s, went on to become one of the most prolific writers of books and screenplays. He first radio play was broadcast in 1957, and later wrote a TV adaptation of Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie. Sir John, whose daughter is actress Emily Mortimer, was knighted in 1998. His other well-known screen creations included obnoxious Conservative MP Lesley Titmuss, portrayed by actor David Threlfall.

'Whiff of erudition' Obituary: Sir John Mortimer | Culture | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close The barrister, playwright and author Sir John Mortimer , who has died aged 85, was a man for all the seasons that touched his Chilterns garden, where he lived as profusely as he wrote, in a spirit of unjudgmental generosity. His greatest achievement was to create, in Rumpole of the Bailey, a lawyer whom the world would love. Though born in Hampstead, north London, John grew up in the house at Turville, near Henley, Oxfordshire, that he never really left. His father was an irascible, blind barrister, the Mortimer of Mortimer on Wills, Probate and Divorce. His mother, devoted and stoic, read aloud the sad, true stories of cruelty and passion between the wars contained in his father's briefs for the divorce court.

John, an only child, was sent to the Dragon school at Oxford, in a class with the historian EP Thompson and a "sour-faced boy who wouldn't share his tuck", who grew up to become a severe circuit judge and model for Rumpole's adversary, Judge Bullingdon. Home from Harrow, the teenager wracked his imagination to stage theatricals that his father might "see" – his contribution to the stiff upper-lipped family pretence that Clifford Mortimer was not blind. In Henley, he encountered with interest the bookshop-owning lesbians who had taken opium with Cocteau, and a prim, elderly lady who had, in her youth, urinated regularly upon pioneering sexologist Havelock Ellis. He determined to be a writer, and on leaving school joined the Crown Film Unit, devising accounts of industrial and military Britain in wartime. But Clifford had other ideas, a clash captured in A Voyage Round My Father, the account by John of their relationship that first surfaced on BBC radio in 1963: "Father: ... if you were only a writer, who would you rub shoulders with? (with contempt) Other writers? You'll be far better off in the law.

Son: I don't know. Father: No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean fingernails. Another thing, if you were a writer, think of your poor, unfortunate wife... Son: What? Father: She'd have you at home every day! In carpet slippers... Drinking tea and stumped for words! You'd be far better off down the tube each morning, and off to the law courts... the law of husband and wife may seem idiotic at first sight but when you get to know it, you'll find it can exercise a vague, medieval charm. Learn a little law, won't you? Just to please me.

Son: It was my father's way to offer the law to me – the great stone column of authority which has been dragged by an adulterous, careless, negligent and half-criminal humanity down the ages – as if it were a small mechanical toy which might occupy half an hour on a rainy afternoon." When Britain's other 1960s playwrights examined their fathers – Peter Nicholls despairingly in Forget-Me-Not Lane, David Mercer bitterly in After Heggarty - A Voyage Round My Father stood out, not only for its stagecraft and for Alec Guinness's central performance, but for the unquestioning love distilled in its lines for this man who had refused to show any to his son. Many young people ruin what would otherwise be talented and useful lives by devoting themselves to law, and John at the time felt himself to be one of them (he was always remarking on the irony of leaving the artificial atmosphere of the court at 4.30pm for the real life of theatre rehearsals). Yet practice of law, although it sapped the early development of his writing skills, eventually gave him the experience which produced his greatest character.

After Brasenose College, Oxford, and at war's end, love and law came hand in hand. He was called to the bar in 1948 and in the following year married Penelope Fletcher, taking on her four existing children and adding two of their own. They wrote a travel book together, With Love and Lizards (1957) and novels separately, as he struggled to develop a practice. Soon he discovered a real talent for divorcing people (in those barbaric, fault-finding days before divorce reform), and for the arcane Chancery world in which time and talent is expended in deciding the validity of a will written on a duck egg, or the charitable status of a legacy to Trappist nuns. After the series of half-hour radio plays, John adapted A Voyage Round My Father for television (1969, with Mark Dignam and Ian Richardson as father and son), then the stage (1971, with Guinness and Jeremy Brett) and then back into a film for television (1982, with Laurence Olivier and Alan Bates). It returned to the West End stage in 2006 with Derek Jacobi and Dominic Rowan.

However, John's first stage success, A Dock Brief – set in the cells, where an incompetent barrister counsels himself and his convicted client – was rooted in his own nervousness about failure and his permanent terror at having responsibility for another's fate. For this reason, he avoided the criminal law until reform dried up his contested divorce work, and he had no alternative but to go "down the Bailey". By the end of the 1960s he had a considerable reputation as a novelist (his first, Charade, drawing on his Crown Film Unit experience, and unrelated to the movie, appeared in 1947) and playwright, and had played an important role in the abolition of the death penalty and the passage of the Theatres Act, which saw off that bane of the British stage, the Lord Chamberlain's power of censorship – not that his own work had ever been in danger from this quarter. An irony of his leadership of the anti-censorship movement was his profound belief that anything at all should be capable of being said about sex, coupled with his own reluctance to deal in his work with anything other than its consequence.

Sex was an amusing but bemusing fact of life: "The whole business has been overestimated by the poets." This was not, one feels, an attitude shared by Penelope. Theirs was, in fact, a remarkable marriage, although its final stages were somewhat bitterly reflected by Penelope in her novel The Home (1971). John, typically, celebrated more of the fun and laughter in his play Collaborators (1973), in which the couple metamorphosed into characters played by Glenda Jackson and John Wood. By this time, John was a successful silk - he had become QC in 1966 - having reinvented himself as an advocate in murder trials. He found a macabre fascination in the pattern of bloodstains, and acquired a singular ability to charm expert prosecution witnesses out of their preconceptions. He was the greatest cross-examiner of such experts ("the art of cross-examination is not to examine crossly") and many alleged murderers owed their liberty to his ability to draw out a doubt in the apparently closed mind.

But nothing in the training of the English bar and bench had equipped it for the underground press, and when, in 1971, a largely unreadable magazine called Oz published a cartoon strip featuring Rupert Bear with an erection, its editors were treated as if they had committed treason. QCs, their cab-rank principles forgotten, fled from the proffered defence brief. A few days before the trial – for conspiracy to corrupt public morals, an offence carrying a maximum of life imprisonment – Richard Neville and I showed John the offending publication while he was lunching a young woman, also named Penelope. They giggled. We begged him to take the case. "Goody," was his response. Thus began his second life, as defender of the apparently indefensible, as creator of Rumpole and much else besides, and, from 1972, following his divorce, as husband of Penelope Gollop, Penny the second, and father of Emily and Rosie. His first wife died in 1999.

Two autobiographies, Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) and Murderers and Other Friends (1994) speak of a life anchored in family, yet lived in a daily dramatic jumble of court cases, plays and television series, sharply observing the vanities of the world through the blur of diminishing eyesight. John retired from the bar in 1981. Rumpole was the barrister he wanted to be, but wasn't. He was too nervous – petrified before a big case, and diffident about his own abilities. However, his final speeches, meticulously handwritten, were minor works of literature. Almost alone at the bar, he could laugh a case out of court (had he stayed, he would have made a fortune in libel defences).

His forensic contribution to the Oz case was effectively to end censorship for the written word, first for literature, by arguing the appeal which freed Last Exit to Brooklyn (the 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr that was prosecuted under obscenity laws for its treatment of sex, drugs and violence), then by persuading the jury to reject the moral corruption charge, and going on to demolish, at the appeal, Judge Michael Argyle's directions on obscenity. Of course pornography corrupted – starting with the policemen charged with enforcing the laws against it, many of whom were later jailed for taking bribes. John put on his wig and took off his glasses, so he could not see some of the trash he was called upon to defend with a success that drew rage from Mary Whitehouse and an extravagant attack from the Times, which claimed that no jury was immune to his charm.

The Williams committee on obscenity, reporting in 1980, agreed with Kenneth Tynan in crediting John with achieving a de facto freedom for the written word by his victorious defence of Inside Linda Lovelace (1973), a shabby little book that would have gone unnoticed had the DPP's office not decided to dignify it with a prosecution, after which it sold a million copies. From dawn each day John would be at work on his supreme creation, Rumpole of the Bailey. Horace Rumpole had, like all great fictional characters, been composed from fragments of the real people John had worked with, his father, and James Burge (a mercurial Old Bailey junior who never quite recovered from the professional consequences of defending Stephen Ward during the Profumo scandal in 1963) and Jeremy Hutchinson, a mighty defence silk married at the time to Peggy Ashcroft. In the hands of Leo McKern and Thames Television from 1978 to 1992 (after an initial appearance on the BBC in 1975), and in novels that continued till 2006, Rumpole achieved international acclaim.

There are Rumpole societies of lawyers basking undeservedly in his popularity from Los Angeles to Perth. Rumpole is, perhaps, the first truly Dickensian character to emerge from the medium of television. There remains one great virtue about him - his independence - along with much that has, for good reason, passed away. If Rumpole returned today, he would still not be made a silk. The new appointments board displays a marked bias towards appointing prosecutors rather than defenders to the rank of Queens Counsel. John worked on, long after leaving the bar, meticulous as ever. He came to the European court of human rights in Strasbourg with us in 1995 to research the law and the restaurants that feature in Rumpole and the Rights of Man, and more recent volumes had the bewildered barrister grappling with Asbos and terrorism control orders. Too full of ideas to sleep, he started work on a new film or novel or play – or all at the same time – at 5am, ending in time for long gossipy lunches with friends and family, followed by theatre and parties in London.

In the capital, he has in recent years served as culture's Queen Mother, gracing the National Theatre, the Royal Opera, the Royal Ivy and the Royal Court with his comfortingly unchanging, beaming presence. It is a sorry reflection on his political friends that he was never made Lord Mortimer of Turville, although he was knighted in 1998. Later works included tales of the opportunist Thatcherite politician Leslie Titmuss, Paradise Postponed (1985, televised 1986) and Titmuss Regained (1990, televised 1991); Summer's Lease (1988, televised 1989), set in Tuscany, and Dunster (1992), about an adversarial friendship that culminates in a court case. For Covent Garden he translated Die Fledermaus (1989), for the RSC, adapted A Christmas Carol (1994), and for OUP he produced The Oxford Book of Villains (1992).

The older he became, the more determined he was to cudgel his mind for any idea that might amuse a reader, while continuing to champion the causes for which he cared – the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Royal Court Theatre, and a holiday home for deprived children that he and Penny helped to establish in Turville. Politically, his faith in liberal socialism wavered at the end. He had emerged from his one-member Communist cell at Harrow to a postwar Labour party he supported with increasing conviction as the Thatcher years changed Britain for the worse. Once the joker, jotting his contributions to the satirical BBC TV comedy That Was The Week That Was during idle afternoons in court in the early 1960s, he and Penny teamed up with Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser to found the 20 June group in 1987 – reviled almost as viciously in the Tory press as it was by those on the left who were not invited to join. Although saddened by the 1992 election loss, he was increasingly uncertain about Tony Blair and his talent for turning the Labour into the war party. In 2005 he broke the habit of a lifetime, and voted Liberal Democrat.

The previous year an unauthorised biography by Graham Lord produced a delightful result. It stirred some embers, from which emerged, fully-formed, a lost son, the hidden fruit of a 60s affair with the actor Wendy Craig. It was a happy discovery for both men, and later a proper biography, A Voyage Round John Mortimer (2007), by Valerie Grove did her subject justice, capturing some of the pleasures of the Mortimer caravanserai: the long Sunday lunches at Turville in winter, the bluebell picnics in Chiltern woods every spring; the summer idylls in that part of Italy he dubbed Chiantishire. In the last years, age wearied everything except his mind. His rotund face collapsed, his limbs and bladder gave up, bedtime became a ritual of excruciating pain, yet he continued writing and performing, as if for dear life. Mortimer's Miscellany ran for a month at the King's Head, Islington, north London, in 2007. A doctor's warning that the run might kill him only excited him at the prospect of dying like Dickens.

He strove to keep his jokes up to date, although (like the law) they lagged by a decade. (Judge comes into court confessing he has left the judgment he is meant to read in his country cottage. "Fax it up, m'lord," says counsel. "Yes it does, rather.") His final years brought reminders of his permanent contribution to the English stage, with the much praised production of Voyage with Jacobi, followed in 2007-08 by Edward Fox in the double bill of Dock Brief and Edwin, first aired as a radio play in 1982, about a retired judge obsessed by the notion that his friend and neighbour may have been the father of his son. The house in Turville Heath had acquired a conservatory, for Olivier to pot earwigs in the television version of Voyage. Every weekend until his death it became a place of laughter and gossip and gumboots and children, with friends who felt privileged (although they were never made to feel privileged) to inspect the garden and walk in the wood and sip tea and champagne and talk of everything except Michelangelo, with the Renaissance man who had been saved from terminal decadence by his Reformation wife.

Much of his work in the last half of his life, and much of his continuing happiness, was inspired by Penny the second, whose enormous strengths of decency and determination creatively challenged his own vacillation and reluctance to make moral judgments. The result may be seen in his work, and in his family: actress Emily and model Rosie (daughters with Penny II); Radio 4 producer Jeremy and social worker Sally (with Penny I) and law/IT consultant Ross Bentley, his long-lost son. John Clifford Mortimer, barrister playwright and author, born 21 April 1923; died 16 January 2009 'Rumpole' writer Mortimer dies, aged 85 'Rumpole' writer Mortimer dies, aged 85 Rumpole Of The Bailey creator Sir John Mortimer passes away, aged 85.

Don't Miss Share 4 hours ago 12:06 AM Share 4 hours ago 12:01 AM 4 hours ago 11:38 PM Latest News Share 1 hour ago 2:44 AM Share 2 hours ago 2:14 AM Share 2 hours ago 1:58 AM 4 hours ago 12:06 AM Must Read Share 16 hours ago 11:54 AM Share 4 hours ago 12:01 AM Share 10 hours ago 6:05 PM 16 January 2009 1:17 PM Shares Rumpole Of The Bailey creator Sir John Mortimer has passed away, aged 85. The writer, whose daughter is actress Emily Mortimer, died after a long illness, reports the BBC. Mortimer, who began his career as a barrister in the 1940s, was a prolific author and dramatist. His first radio play was in 1957, while his last TV script was for 2001's romantic drama In Love And War.

His best-known work was the ITV drama Rumpole Of The Bailey, which starred Leo McKern in the lead role between 1978 and 1992. He also penned the ITV's 1981 11-part serial Brideshead Revisited and drama Paradise Postponed, which featured actor David Threlfall playing obnoxious MP Leslie Titmuss. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below BBC head of radio drama Alison Hindell said Mortimer's death would be a "great loss" to admirers of his "wonderful works". Melvyn Bragg, who was a neighbour of Mortimer in Oxfordshire village Turville Heath, said: "Life was encircled around that place in Turville and he was the monarch of that. "We went to pay court to him and, to be honest, you went just to laugh and to hear the latest gossip and the latest book he'd read and 'what do you think of this and what do you think of that?' "There was a whiff of erudition and scandal always around John and it was completely seductive and he'll be badly, badly missed." Mortimer was knighted in 1988.

John Mortimer RIP - Farewell Rumpole of the Bailey John Mortimer, the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, died at the age of 85 today . Many will have fond memories of the various literary works he produced throughout his lifetime. Most will think immediately of Sir Horace Rumpole of the Old Bailey and of his wife, Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed. The writer and former barrister was often described as a national treasure who increasingly came to resemble his Old Bailey character. The Guardian had the following eulogy : The novelist, playwright and former barrister, who was born in London in 1923, was known and loved for the comic lawyer Rumpole, whose dedication to cheap wine and motto “never plead guilty”, has been his most enduring creation. “He would announce to me on the phone that he thought he ought to ‘do a Rumpole’ on asbos or weapons of mass destruction, or some similar topic about which he felt particularly strongly. Rumpole and John became increasingly fused,” said Tony Lacey, Mortimer’s editor at Penguin. Mortimer originally wrote the series for television, later spinning it off into a series of books and radio programmes.

If you want to remind yourself of Rumpole, then here is a clip from “Rumpole’s Last Case”. Here Rumpole has had a big win on the horses and decides to hang up his wig – but not without telling Judge Bullingham what he really thinks of him. The legal world is full of eccentricities. Some of them are human and some of them represent the peculiarities of the law. It is a rich field for anyone of John Mortimer’s caliber. I had always thought he was responsible also for a BBC Television series discussing strange legal cases. I remember particularly the start of the series where the irascible senior, Mr. Haddock, attempted to pay a debt to Inland Revenue by writing his check on a cow. He insisted such a check was perfectly legal. It could well have been written by John Mortimer. In fact the Negotiable Cow is the common name of a fictitious legal case known as Inland Revenue v Haddock (heard jointly with R v Haddock). It was written by the humorist A. P. Herbert for Punch magazine as part of his series of Misleading Cases in the Common Law.

The case did evolve into something of an urban legend, and periodically assertions are made that it was a true case. Despite my confusion, John Mortimer’s legacy of memorable legal humorous works will mean that he is never forgotten. He will be sorely missed. Related articles by Zemanta British writer created Rumpole - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections British writer created Rumpole January 17, 2009 |Matt Schudel | Schudel writes for the Washington Post. John Mortimer, a British lawyer and writer who created the character Horace Rumpole, a disheveled barrister memorably featured in the popular television series "Rumpole of the Bailey," died Friday at his home in Oxfordshire, England. He was 85. The cause of death was not reported. Mortimer, the author of more than 30 works of fiction and dozens of plays, was best known in the United States for the "Rumpole" series, which starred actor Leo McKern as the unkempt defense attorney who had a cast of louts as clients.

The comic series was based largely on Mortimer's experiences as one of Britain's leading courtroom advocates and defenders of civil rights and free speech. Rumpole's motto of "Never plead guilty!" was, in fact, Mortimer's own. Referring to his dual career in his 1982 autobiography, "Clinging to the Wreckage," Mortimer claimed "with no particular vanity" to be "the best playwright ever to have defended a murderer at the Central Criminal Court." He published his first novel in 1947, a year before he joined the British bar. Beginning in the 1950s, Mortimer wrote dozens of plays and television scripts. He was credited with writing the screenplay for the acclaimed 1981 British TV miniseries of Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited." He also adapted several Graham Greene stories for British television and wrote a screenplay based on John Fowles' novel "The Ebony Tower" for a 1984 television film starring Laurence Olivier.

Mortimer's autobiographical play, "A Voyage Round My Father," starring Alec Guinness, was a theatrical hit in London in the early 1970s and was made into a 1982 film with Olivier playing Mortimer's father, an imposingly gruff lawyer. Nonetheless, Mortimer's greatest creation was the grizzled and bemused Rumpole, who first appeared in a 1975 television play. He wore an ill-fitting barrister's wig, trailed cigar smoke and ashes, and could often be found tippling cheap claret in Pommeroy's Wine Bar. With accused killers, burglars, prostitutes, pornographers and schemers of every stripe as his clients, Rumpole triumphed in the most hopeless legal cases. He outfoxed his opponents in the courtroom, but at home he was constantly browbeaten by his formidable wife, Hilda, better known as "She Who Must Be Obeyed." "Rumpole has customarily been described as a great comic creation," lawyer and critic Marcel Berlins wrote in London's Sunday Times. "He deserves to lose the limiting adjective, comic.

He is simply one of the great fictional characters of modern English literature." John Clifford Mortimer was born April 21, 1923, in London. He interrupted his studies at Oxford University during World War II to write propaganda scripts for the British government. Mortimer graduated from Oxford in 1947, joined the British bar a year later and handled all kinds of cases. Over time, he became an expert in free speech issues, successfully defending the British publishers of D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Hubert Selby Jr.'s "Last Exit to Brooklyn" in landmark obscenity cases. In 1977, Mortimer successfully defended the Sex Pistols, the punk rock group whose first album's title, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols," was deemed obscene by British authorities. He retired from the law in 1986 to devote himself to writing. He rose before 6 a.m., fortified himself with a glass of champagne and produced 1,000 polished words each day.

In addition to his Rumpole novels and stories, he published three volumes of memoirs; two collections of interviews with celebrities; and the "Titmuss" trilogy, which was about politics and power in Margaret Thatcher's England and became a popular TV serial in Britain. Mortimer was politically liberal but had a socially conservative bent. He supported the monarchy and fox hunting but was skeptical of feminists. He said he believed in everything about religion except God. His first marriage, to writer Penelope Fletcher Mortimer, ended in divorce. In 2004, Mortimer disclosed that he had a son from an affair in the 1960s with actress Wendy Craig. The son did not learn of his parentage for more than 40 years, but he and Mortimer had become close. Other survivors include Mortimer's second wife, Penelope Gollop, whom he married in 1972 and called "Penny the Second"; two children from his first marriage; and two daughters from his second marriage, including actress Emily Mortimer.

MORE: Obituary | John Mortimer, the creator of “Rumpole” | The Seattle Times WASHINGTON — John Mortimer, a British lawyer and writer who created the character Horace Rumpole, a disheveled barrister memorably featured in the popular television series “Rumpole of the Bailey,” died Jan. 16 at his home in Oxfordshire, England. He was 85. The cause of death was not reported. Mr. Mortimer, the author of more than 30 works of fiction and dozens of plays, was best-known in the United States for the “Rumpole” series, which starred actor Leo McKern as the unkempt defense attorney who had a cast of louts as clients. The series was based largely on Mr. Mortimer’s experiences as one of Britain’s leading courtroom advocates and defenders of civil rights and free speech. Rumpole’s motto of “Never plead guilty!” was, in fact, Mr. Mortimer’s own. Most Read Stories Unlimited Digital Access. $1 for 4 weeks. Referring to his dual career in his 1982 autobiography, “Clinging to the Wreckage,” Mr.

Mortimer claimed “with no particular vanity” to be “the best playwright ever to have defended a murderer at the Central Criminal Court.” He published his first novel in 1947, a year before he joined the British bar, and he was armed with a ready wit, whether in the courtroom or at the typewriter. Describing his place in literature to The New York Times in 1995, he said, “I straddle the chasm between [thriller writer] Jeffrey Archer and Salman Rushdie.” “Brideshead Revisited” Beginning in the 1950s, Mr. Mortimer wrote dozens of plays and television scripts. He was credited with writing the screenplay for the acclaimed 1981 British TV miniseries of Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.” He also adapted several Graham Greene stories for British television and wrote a screenplay based on John Fowles’ novel “The Ebony Tower” for a 1984 television film starring Laurence Olivier. Mr.

Mortimer’s autobiographical play, “A Voyage Round My Father,” starring Alec Guinness, was a theatrical hit in London in the early 1970s and was made into a 1982 film with Olivier playing Mr. Mortimer’s father, an imposingly gruff lawyer. Nonetheless, Mr. Mortimer’s greatest creation was the grizzled and bemused Rumpole, who first appeared in a 1975 television play. With accused killers, burglars, prostitutes, pornographers and schemers of every stripe as his clients, Rumpole triumphed in the most hopeless legal cases. Outfoxed foes He outfoxed his opponents in the courtroom, but at home he was constantly browbeaten by his formidable wife, Hilda, better known as She Who Must Be Obeyed. John Clifford Mortimer was born April 21, 1923, in London and was educated at the exclusive British prep school Harrow. He interrupted studies at Oxford University during World War II to write propaganda scripts for the British government. As a boy, Mr.

Mortimer read legal briefs and poetry to his father, a divorce lawyer who lost his sight when his son was 13 but whose blindness was never mentioned by the family. Mr. Mortimer graduated from Oxford in 1947 and handled all kinds of cases after joining the British bar. Over time, he became an expert in free-speech issues, successfully defending the British publishers of D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Hubert Selby Jr.’s “Last Exit to Brooklyn” in landmark obscenity cases. He was sent to Nigeria by Amnesty International to represent Wole Soyinka, who later won the Nobel Prize for literature, and helped win his acquittal in a free-speech case. In 1977, Mr. Mortimer successfully defended the Sex Pistols, the punk-rock group whose first album’s title was deemed obscene by British authorities. Mr. Mortimer was unapologetic about his varied and sometimes shady clientele. “My whole life has been spent helping people to avoid their just fate,” he said. He retired from the law in 1986 to devote himself to writing.

In addition to his Rumpole novels and stories, he published three volumes of memoirs; two collections of interviews with celebrities; and the “Titmuss” trilogy, which was about politics and power in Margaret Thatcher’s England and became a popular TV serial in Britain. Conservative side Mr. Mortimer was politically liberal but had a socially conservative bent. He supported the monarchy and fox hunting but was skeptical of feminists. His first marriage, to writer Penelope Fletcher Mortimer, ended in divorce. Her 1962 novel, “The Pumpkin Eater,” made into a film starring Anne Bancroft, was an acid-tipped view of their marriage. In 2004, Mr. Mortimer disclosed that he had a son from an affair in the 1960s with well-known actress Wendy Craig. The son did not learn of his true parentage for more than 40 years, but he and Mr. Mortimer had become close in recent years. Other survivors include Mr.

Mortimer’s second wife, Penelope Gollop, whom he married in 1972 and called “Penny the Second”; two children from his first marriage; and two daughters from his second marriage, including actress Emily Mortimer. Never tired of Rumpole Despite failing eyesight and ill health, Mr. Mortimer never tired of Rumpole and completed two final novels about his greatest fictional creation in the past two years. He also 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.” “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.” Information from The New York Times is included in this report.

Matt Schudel BBC News - The famous faces who died in 2009 Printable version The famous faces who died in 2009 Some of the key personalities from the worlds of film, television, music and the arts who passed away in 2009. Click on the links below to read more about their lives and careers. BEA ARTHUR Golden Girls actress Bea Arthur died of cancer in April at the age of 86. She played the on-screen daughter of Estelle Getty, who died last year, in the popular US sitcom. Arthur was also famous for the show Maude, first creating the character in the comedy series All In The Family. She won Emmy Awards for both The Golden Girls and Maude and also a Tony Award for the musical Mame. FARRAH FAWCETT Best known for starring in the 1970s television series Charlie's Angels, Farrah Fawcett passed away in June. The 62-year-old's death was overshadowed by Michael Jackson, who died on the same day. Fawcett, who was suffering from cancer, chronicled her battle in a TV documentary called Farrah's Story earlier this year.

Her Charlie's Angels co-star Jaclyn Smith said she had "courage, strength and faith". The sudden death of singer Stephen Gately in October shocked and saddened Boyzone fans. A post-mortem examination established the 33-year-old died of natural causes whilst on holiday in Spain. Gately's bandmates, including Ronan Keating, paid an emotional tribute to the star at his funeral in Dublin. After Gately's death it emerged he had recently made peace with his mother after a 10-year rift. Return to the top JADE GOODY Jade Goody, who made her name on reality TV show Big Brother in 2002, died at the age of 27. Thousands of fans turned out for her funeral, which was held in Essex. The mother-of-two died of cervical cancer and found out about her illness during an appearance on the Indian version of Big Brother. It is thought the media coverage of her illness helped increase the number of women coming forward for cervical screenings. In January artist and children's presenter Tony Hart died, aged 83. Hart had suffered from health problems for a number of years, including two strokes.

The affable host inspired children to paint and draw through shows like Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat for nearly 50 years before he retired in 2001. Fellow artist Rolf Harris led tributes, calling Hart "a very gentle and talented guy". MICHAEL JACKSON There was a huge worldwide reaction to the unexpected death of singer Michael Jackson in June. Aged 50, the singer's death was later ruled as homicide, which was primarily caused by a powerful anaesthetic. His famous moonwalk and unique blend of soul, funk and rock made him the biggest pop act in the world. Jackson was best known for his extensive catalogue of hits including Bad, Thriller and Man In The Mirror. MAGGIE JONES Coronation Street actress Maggie Jones, who played Blanche Hunt in the soap, died aged 75 in December. Her character in the long-running series was best known for her sharp tongue and harsh put-downs. William Roache, who plays Ken Barlow, said she was a "brilliant actress who had an "amazing dry wit". She first appeared as the matriarchal figure 35 years ago.

Return to the top DANNY LA RUE Entertainer Danny La Rue died at the end of July aged 81. He had been ill with cancer. The star made a career out of his vaudeville drag act, although he preferred to be known as "a comic in a frock". During the 60s and 70s, he was one of the highest paid stars on television as well as carving a successful niche on the stage and in cabaret. Strictly Come Dancing host Bruce Forsyth called him "a great comic with great timing". Return to the top FRANK McCOURT Frank McCourt, author of best seller Angela's Ashes, died of cancer in a New York hospice in July. The 78-year-old Irish-American writer had been suffering from meningitis and had recently been treated for skin cancer. Angela's Ashes, a memoir of McCourt's childhood in Ireland, sold millions of copies and won the Pulitzer Prize. His other works include 'Tis and Teacher Man, which both draw on his later life in New York.

Return to the top SIR JOHN MORTIMER Rumpole of the Bailey creator Sir John Mortimer passed away in January at the age of 85 after a long illness. The dramatist and author began working as a barrister in the 1940s and had his first radio play broadcast in 1957. His other well-known screen creations included obnoxious Conservative MP Leslie Titmuss, portrayed by actor David Threlfall. Melvyn Bragg, a friend and neighbour of Sir John, said the writer had a "wonderful life, beginning and ending". Sir John Mortimer | British writer and lawyer | Britannica.com British writer and lawyer Alternative Title: Sir John Clifford Mortimer Sir John Mortimer Caroline Norton Sir John Mortimer, in full Sir John Clifford Mortimer (born April 21, 1923, Hampstead, London , Eng.—died Jan. 16, 2009, near Henley-on-Thames , Oxfordshire, Eng.), English barrister and writer who wrote plays for the stage, television, radio , and motion pictures, as well as novels and autobiographical works. John Mortimer, c. 1971.

Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Mortimer was educated at Harrow and at Brasenose College, Oxford , and began writing before he was called to the bar in 1948. In 1949 he married Penelope Ruth Fletcher (the novelist Penelope Mortimer ; divorced 1972). Mortimer began his writing career as a novelist, with Charade (1947). Many of his short stories and novels drew on his legal experience, and the television production of his play The Dock Brief established his reputation. Mortimer wrote many other plays, including The Wrong Side of the Park (performed 1960) and The Judge (performed 1967). He successfully adapted the farce A Flea in Her Ear (1965, from Georges Feydeau) and the novel Brideshead Revisited (1981, from Evelyn Waugh). One of his finest works is A Voyage Round My Father (1970), an autobiographical play about his relationship with his blind father. Throughout his writing career Mortimer maintained a thriving law practice and became known as one of Great Britain’s principal defenders in free-speech and civil-rights cases.

As a writer he had popular success in the late 1970s and ’80s with the television series Rumpole of the Bailey and short stories featuring the crusty old British barrister Horace Rumpole . His novels include Paradise Postponed (1985) and Dunster (1992). Clinging to the Wreckage (1982) is a frank autobiography . Mortimer was knighted in 1998. Learn More in these related articles: Life In Legacy Life In Legacy - Week ending Saturday, January 17, 2009 Hold pointer over photo for person's name. Click on photo to go to brief obit. Click on name to return to picture. Art and Literature Hortense Calisher (97) novelist and short-story writer whose unpredictable turns of phrase, challenging fictional situations, and complex plots captivated and puzzled readers for a half-century. Calisher was known for her dense prose in such works of fiction as False Entry and In Greenwich There Are Many Gravelled Walks. She died in New York City on January 14, 2009.

Dusan Dzamonja (80) renowned Croatian sculptor whose monumental, abstract creations were exhibited around Europe. Dzamonja died of heart failure in Zagreb, Croatia on January 14, 2009. Shigeo Fukuda (76) Japanese graphic designer known for antiwar and environmental advocacy posters that conveyed complex ideas with images of logo simplicity. Fukuda died of a stroke in Tokyo, Japan on January 11, 2009. Judith Hoffberg (74) art librarian and curator, a major influence in the emergence of books as an artist's medium who established a global festival of edible books. Since 1978, Hoffberg had edited and published Umbrella, a journal dedicated to artists' books, works of art in book form. Diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in September 2008, she died of lymphoma in Santa Monica, California on January 16, 2009. John Mortimer (85) British lawyer and writer, creator of the curmudgeonly criminal lawyer Rumpole of the Bailey, defender of the British criminal classes.

Mortimer combined a career as a lawyer with a large literary output that included dozens of screen and stage plays and radio dramas. His most famous creation was Horace Rumpole, a cigar-smoking, wine-loving barrister who appeared in a TV series and a string of novels and stories. Mortimer died in Oxfordshire, England on January 16, 2009. W. D. Snodgrass (83) Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who had a nearly 40-year teaching career. Snodgrass won the Pulitzer for poetry in 1960 for his first book, Heart's Needle, which grew from heartbreak at losing custody of his daughter in a bitter divorce. He died of inoperable lung cancer, eight days after his 83rd birthday, in Erieville, New York, just east of Syracuse, on January 13, 2009. Andrew Wyeth (91) artist who portrayed the hidden melancholy of the people and landscapes of Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley and coastal Maine in works such as Christina's World (1948; shown above). The son of famed painter and book illustrator N. C.

Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth gained wealth, acclaim, and tremendous popularity but chafed under criticism from some experts who considered him a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator. The late J. Carter Brown, for many years director of the National Gallery, called such talk "a knee-jerk reaction among intellectuals in this country that if it's popular, it can't be good." Wyeth died in his sleep in the Philadelphia suburb of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania on January 16, 2009. Business and Science Nancy Bird-Walton (93) aviation pioneer who became the first woman in Australia to operate a commercial aircraft. In 1935, Bird-Walton earned a commercial pilot's license and began taking paying passengers for joyrides around the country. She later ran an air ambulance service for remote Outback areas of New South Wales state, becoming known as the "Angel of the Outback." In 1950, she founded the Australian Women Pilots' Association, which mentors female pilots. Named a Living National Treasure by the National Trust of Australia in 1997, she died in Sydney, Australia on January 13, 2009. Dr.

William T. Close (84) American surgeon, father of actress Glenn Close, who in 1976 played an important role in controlling the first epidemic of the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever in central Africa and preventing it from spreading. Close made his last house call a month before he died of a heart attack in Big Piney, Wyoming on January 15, 2009. Trammell Crow (94) prominent Texas real estate developer. A one-time accountant with no real estate experience, Crow built one of the largest real estate development companies in the nation, Trammell Crow Co. It was sold in 2006 for $1.8 billion to CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., attracted by Crow's blue chip corporate clients, including Exxon Mobil and Bank of America. Crow died near Tyler, Texas on January 14, 2009. Edmund de Rothschild (93) merchant banker from the renowned banking family's British branch who led the development of a major hydroelectric project in Labrador while helping his firm to expand globally and opening it to people outside his family.

De Rothschild died, 15 days after his 93rd birthday, near Southampton, England on January 17, 2009. John F. ("Jack") Gifford (68) electronics industry executive who founded analog chip maker Maxim Integrated Products and was the Silicon Valley company's chief executive until his retirement in 2006. Gifford died of a heart attack on his 68th birthday at his vacation home in Hawaii on January 11, 2009. Jan Kaplicky (71) award-winning Czech architect. Kaplicky's design of a new media center at the Lord's cricket ground in London was honored with Britain's most prestigious architecture award, the Stirling Prize, in 1999. He collapsed on a street and died just hours after his second wife gave birth to their daughter, in Prague, Czech Republic on January 14, 2009. Aron Arthur Moscona (87) biologist who provided early insights into how cells in the developing embryo find one another and interact.

Moscona's experiments from the late '50s to the early '70s looked at how individual embryonic cells form into tissues and organs. He died of heart failure in New York City on January 14, 2009. Robert Palmer (74) former New York advertising executive who in 1986 started a winery on the North Fork of Long Island that became one of the most popular in the region. Palmer died of a blood infection in Huntington, New York on January 16, 2009. Dr. Pierce A. Rooney Jr. (85) pioneering Sacramento County (Calif.) pathologist who became the first board-certified forensic pathologist in Sacramento in 1969. Rooney was widely consulted as an expert for his experience performing thousands of autopsies during 20 years at the Sacramento County Coroner's Office, including extensive research into causes of sudden infant death syndrome and autopsies performed on farmworkers slain by mass killer Juan Corona and victims of serial murderer Gerald Gallego.

Rooney was also involved behind the scenes in major news stories, including a 1972 plane crash that killed 22 people at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour, and helped to bring serial killers to justice at sensational trials. He died of liver cancer in Sacramento, California on January 14, 2009. Victor Vacquier Sr. (101) Scripps Institution of Oceanography geophysicist who developed key instruments for mapping the Earth's magnetic fields and whose research provided an experimental foundation for the now widely accepted theory of plate tectonics. Vacquier died of pneumonia in La Jolla, California on January 11, 2009. Education Maurice Albertson (90) architect of the Peace Corps and a Colorado State University professor emeritus. Albertson and fellow CSU researchers Andrew Rice and Pauline Birky-Kreutzer responded to a request in 1960 from the federal government for a model to encourage the nation's youths to serve in Third World countries. The three wrote a book that set up the basic design of the Peace Corps. The program was officially launched in 1961 by President John F.

Kennedy and now has more than 190,000 volunteers serving in 139 developing countries. Albertson fell ill after a trip to Indonesia in November and died in Fort Collins, Colorado on January 11, 2009. Lisa Flaxman (43) founder and president of musiKids, a Washington, DC-area music program for infants and young children that relied on professional musicians and experienced early childhood educators who encouraged children to sing, play, listen, and move with a dynamic teaching approach. Flaxman wrote many articles on early childhood musical development, helped schools and day-care centers to evaluate their early childhood music programs, and provided teacher training and guidance to integrate music into the curriculum. She was named one of Maryland's Top 100 Women in 2007 for founding musiKares, a nonprofit program dedicated to building music libraries and providing musical programs for Georgetown Hospital patients to help relieve their anxiety. She died of breast cancer in Chevy Chase, Maryland on January 14, 2009. Herbert Hitzeman Jr. (81) Washington University official and alumnus credited with raising more than $1 billion in funds.

Before retiring in 1990, Hitzeman led three fund-raising campaigns, including the Alliance for Washington University, which raised $630.5 million when it was completed in '87; the university said that was a record amount at the time. He died of cancer in St. Louis, Missouri on January 16, 2009. Elise Mudd Marvin (79) founding trustee of Pitzer College and a generous donor to the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other leading cultural institutions in southern California. Marvin's close association to Harvey Mudd College, named for her uncle, led her to donate more than $1 million to the Claremont college from 1969 until her death in Pasadena, California on January 13, 2009. Arne Naess (96) Norwegian philosopher, writer, and mountaineer best known for launching the concept of "deep ecology." Naess was credited with creating the deep ecology concept, promoting the idea that Earth as a planet has as much right as its inhabitants, such as humans, to survive and flourish. He died in his sleep in Oslo, Norway on January 12, 2009.

Martin Ortiz (89) founding director of Whittier College's Center of Mexican-American Affairs who inspired thousands of Latino students to reach for college and earn degrees. Ortiz, who suffered from Parkinson's disease and pneumonia, died in Whittier, California on January 12, 2009. Lorene Rogers (94) former president (1974-79) of the University of Texas at Austin, believed to be the first woman to lead a public university in the country. Rogers died in Dallas, Texas on January 11, 2009. Sheharbano Sangji (22) research assistant in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UCLA who suffered from second- and third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body from a December 29 laboratory fire in the Molecular Science building. An unconfirmed description of the accident said that Sangji was drawing tert-butyl lithium (t-BuLi) from a bottle into a syringe when the plunger came out of the syringe barrel and the chemical, which ignites spontaneously in air, splashed onto her sweater and gloves and set them on fire. She was wearing safety glasses but no lab coat.

She died from her burns in Sherman Oaks, California on January 16, 2009. News and Entertainment William Randolph ("Randy") Adams (64) former head of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra who used his business acumen to save it from bankruptcy. Adams was tapped for the symphony by Enterprise Rent-a-Car chairman and chief executive Andy Taylor, whose family had pledged the institution a $40 million matching grant. Adams raised the match, increasing the overall endowment from $18 million to $134 million. He died of pancreatic cancer in St. Louis, Missouri on January 14, 2009. Pedro ("Cuban Pete") Aguilar (81) one of the leading mambo dancers of the '50s. Aguilar performed for US Presidents and foreign leaders and was hailed as one of the greatest mambo dancers by LIFE magazine. He died of heart failure perhaps related to diabetes, in Miami, Florida on January 13, 2009. Claude Berri (74) fixture for more than 50 years in contemporary French cinema as an actor, writer, director, and producer.

Berri's short film Le Poulet (The Chicken) won an Oscar in 1965. He was in the midst of directing Tresor (Treasure), his 20th directing project, when he died of a "cerebral vascular" problemâ€”language often used to describe a strokeâ€”a day after being hospitalized in Paris, France on January 12, 2009. Russ Conway (95) actor who appeared in scores of films and on TV shows ('50s-'70s) but was perhaps best known for playing Fenton Hardy, father of Frank and Joe Hardy on "The Hardy Boys," part of Walt Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club TV program. Conway died in Laguna Woods, California on January 12, 2009. Leroy Cooper (80) jazz musician who played baritone saxophone for Ray Charles ('50s-'70s) and at times was bandleader for the rhythm-and-blues pianist. Cooper later was a bandleader and performer on Main Street USA at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom for about 20 years.

He died of heart failure in Orlando, Florida on January 15, 2009. Andy DeMize (25) drummer for the Danish-American psychobilly punk band Nekromantix who replaced the group's previous drummer James Meza and worked on the release of their eighth and latest album Life Is a Grave & Dig It! (2007). DeMize, whose real name was Andrew Martinez, was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver in Fullerton, California on January 11, 2009. Veronika Dudarova (92) Russian conductor who led Moscow orchestras for 60 years. Dudarova became a conductor at the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra in 1947 and in '60 was named chief conductor and artistic director. She left the orchestra in 1989. From 1991 until the end of her life, she headed the Symphony Orchestra of Russia, which she had founded. She died in Moscow, Russia on January 15, 2009.

Gage Bush Englund (77) ballet mistress of ABT II, a former dancer with American Ballet Theater and the Joffrey Ballet, and former ballet mistress of the Joffrey II Dancers. Englund died of cancer in New York City on January 12, 2009. Susanna Foster (84) singer and '40s leading lady whose most famous role was the terrorized prima donna in the first talking version of Phantom of the Opera. Foster costarred with Claude Rains and Nelson Eddy in the 1943 Oscar-winning remake of the 1925 silent screen version of the macabre melodrama that starred Lon Chaney. It was one of a dozen films Foster made before virtually disappearing from the screen in 1945. She was offered the lead in National Velvet (1944; the role that made a star of young Elizabeth Taylor) but turned it down because she wanted only singing roles. MGM dropped Foster, and she drifted into obscurity. She died of heart failure in Englewood, New Jersey on January 17, 2009.

Gary Kurfirst (61) rock manager, promoter, publisher, producer, and label executive who helped to shape a generation's pop music by handling acts like the Talking Heads and Jane's Addiction. Kurfirst may have been best known for managing a parade of famous rock groups, including Blondie, the Ramones, the B-52s, Big Audio Dynamite, the Eurythmics, and, more recently, the band Live and Shirley Manson of Garbage. He died while vacationing in Nassau, the Bahamas on January 13, 2009. Malcolm MacPherson (65) former correspondent for Time and Newsweek whose books included Roberts Ridge and Hocus POTUS. MacPherson served in the US Marines during the Vietnam War and later reported on conflicts in Africa, Northern Ireland, and the current war in Iraq. He died of a heart attack during a party in celebration of the impending inauguration of President Barack Obama, in Warrenton, Virginia on January 17, 2009.

Patrick McGoohan (80) British TV star in the '50s and '60s best known for two shows that crossed over to American TV, Secret Agent and The Prisoner. McGoohan won two Emmys for his guest appearances as a villain on the TV detective series Columbo and gave a memorable performance as ruthless King Edward "Longshanks" in the Oscar-winning film Braveheart, starring Mel Gibson. He died suddenly after a brief illness, in Los Angeles, California on January 13, 2009. Ricardo Montalban (88) actor best known as the debonair and mysterious Mr. Roarke on the popular TV series Fantasy Island. Mexican-born Montalban had a long career in Hollywood but found broad fame as the star of ABC-TV's Fantasy Island (1978-84), in which he fulfilled the dreams of his guests with the help of his sidekick, Tattoo. In 1982, Montalban starred as arch-villain Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, reprising a role he had played on a single episode of the TV show in 1967.

He died in Los Angeles, California on January 14, 2009. Jack Nakano (75) educator who launched the nonprofit Youth Theatre Productions in Santa Barbara in the early '60s and later founded and was artistic director of the Hollywood-based California Youth Theatre and YouTHeatre-America! Nakano's long career as a youth-oriented theater arts leader spanned 50 years and touched the lives of performers such as Jack Black, Eric Stoltz, and America Ferrera. He died of heart failure in West Los Angeles, California on January 15, 2009. Tom O'Horgan (84) leader on New York's experimental theater scene in the '60s who later directed the original Broadway productions of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar. O'Horgan died in Venice, Florida on January 11, 2009. Mansour Rahbani (83) prominent Arab composer and lyricist who with his late brother Assi wrote music and plays for one of Lebanon's top divas. In 1955, Assi married singer Nuhad Haddad, who later became famous under the name Fairouz and performed with the brothers.

The Rahbani Brothers & Fairouz later became Lebanon's most famous trio, performing there and around the world. Mansour Rahbani was hospitalized two weeks ago suffering from severe flu and died in Beirut, Lebanon on January 13, 2009. Jennie Ridarelli (91) mother of '60s pop singer and teen idol Bobby Rydell who reportedly lived with the entertainer in his Penn Valley (Pa.) home throughout the last years of her life. Ridarelli died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 13, 2009. Eileen Winters (84) wife of Grammy-winning stand-up comedian and actor Jonathan Winters. The couple had been married for more than 60 years. Eileen Winters died of breast cancer in Santa Barbara, California on January 11, 2009. Allen Zwerdling (86) cofounder of Back Stage, a weekly theater newspaper widely considered the casting bible for performers. Zwerdling died in Rosendale, New York on January 12, 2009. Politics and Military Mary Ejercito (103) mother of former Philippines president Joseph Estrada.

Ejercito's health began to decline during the six-year incarceration of her son and was cited among the reasons for the withdrawal of the appeal of his conviction on criminal plunder charges in 2007. Estrada was immediately pardoned by his successor and has kept a low-profile ever since. Ejercito died of heart seizures and a stomach aneurysm in San Juan City, Philippines on January 13, 2009. Robert G. Ferry (85) retired US Air Force helicopter test pilot who set a record for a nonstop solo helicopter flight across the country without refueling. In 1966, Ferry flew 2,213 miles from Culver City, Calif. to Ormond Beach, Fla. in a Hughes Aircraft YOH-6A helicopter in 15 hours and 8 minutes; the helicopter carried an extra fuel tank. That record still stands. In 1997, Ferry became the first helicopter pilot inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor. He died in Lake San Marcos, California on January 15, 2009. Lt. Gen. Stanley M.

Heng (71) retired former commander of the Nebraska National Guard (1987-2000). Heng died in Lincoln, Nebraska on January 12, 2009. Umar S. Israilov (27) Chechen who had formally accused the president of Chechnya of participating in kidnappings and torture sessions. In late 2006, Israilov filed a complaint against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights that detailed his claims of the systematic use of abductions and torture by President Ramzan A. Kadyrov. and indigenous security forces under his command, to punish suspected insurgents and their families. In what appeared to be another politically motivated killing of a Russian citizen who had criticized government conduct, Israilov was shot to death as he walked out of a grocery store in Vienna, Austria on January 13, 2009. Mary Lundby (60) member of the Iowa State Senate since 1995 and the first and only woman to serve as party floor leader in the state Legislature.

A Republican from Marion, Iowa who represented the 18th District, Lundby was known for working across party lines and putting the people above politics while working on several committees despite her three-year battle with terminal cervical cancer. She died in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on January 17, 2009. James T. Newman (73) Vietnam War helicopter pilot whose rescues of downed airmen won him the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for combat valor, plus the Silver Star, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and 23 Air Medals, among others. Newman died of lung cancer in Chapel Hill, North Carolinia on January 11, 2009. James B. Pearson (88) former US senator (R-Kans., 1962-79), a progressive Republican who represented Kansas in the US Senate for nearly 17 years. Pearson championed causes including deregulating natural gas, expanding international trade, and reducing the number of votes required to end a filibuster from 67 to 60.

He had been on kidney dialysis for several years and died in Gloucester, Massachusetts on January 13, 2009. Nicholas Rey (70) former director of two Wall Street firms who fled Poland as a toddler after German troops invaded in 1939 and later returned to Warsaw as US ambassador. Former President Bill Clinton appointed Rey ambassador to Poland in 1993. He was there when Poland, a former member of the Soviet bloc, was chosen to join NATO. Rey died of lung cancer in the Georgetown district of Washington, DC on January 14, 2009. Leon Ritzenthaler (70) half-brother of former US President Bill Clinton who had a brief brush with fame in June 1993 when a Washington Post reporter discovered that the newly elected then-President had a half-brother living in a small town in northern California. Ritzenthalter found himself suddenly and unexpectedly caught up in a month-long media frenzy and whirlwind tour that took him from California to New York, Washington, DC, and back again, but said he hadn't heard from Clinton in the 11 years since the story erupted.

He died from a heart attack in Arkansas on January 12, 2009. Society and Religion Nellie Arnett (105) survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Born to Scandinavian immigrant parents in San Francisco on New Year's Day 1904, Arnett said one of her earliest memories was riding in her family's horse-drawn coal wagon and surveying the devastation of the great quake that destroyed much of the city. She died in Santa Rosa, California on January 15, 2009. Darrel Brown (22) UPS worker shot and wounded by police after he pulled out a semiautomatic rifle and opened fire through the rear window of a taxicab transporting him from Connecticut to Albany in a nearly hour-long gunfight on Interstate 90. A New York state trooper had pulled over the taxi for speeding during a routine traffic stop. Police said Brown pleaded with police to "Shoot me! Kill me!" as he sprayed 28 shots at law enforcers along the highway, but no one else suffered serious injuries, although the highway was shut down temporarily.

Brown was removed from life support and died from his wounds in East Greenbush, New York on January 12, 2009. James Harvey Callahan (62) Alabama man sentenced to death for the 1982 abduction, rape, and murder of Jacksonville State University student Rebecca Suzanne Howell (26), whose body was found nearly two weeks later underneath a bridge in a creek. Callahan became one of five inmates set to die in the first few months of this year, an unusual group of scheduled executions for Alabama, which had none in 2008 while federal courts handled challenges to lethal injection and upheld it as a method of execution. He was executed by lethal injection in Atmore, Alabama on January 15, 2009. Peter E. Fleming Jr. (79) criminal-defense lawyer whose client list over more than 30 years included high-ranking politicians, flamboyant celebrities, and a cast of characters from outbreaks of corporate crime. Among Fleming's clients were former US attorney John N. Mitchell, boxing promoter Don King, and companies operated by commodities trader Marc Rich, who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton.

Fleming died of complications from lung surgery in New York City on January 14, 2009. Myrtle Jones (111) supercentenarian, believed to be Australia's oldest validated person. Jones spent most of her adult life as a housewife but continued to live in her own home as a widow until she was 109. She also proudly boasted to friends on occasion that she had seen Halley's Comet twice, once in 1910 and again in '86. She died in Adelaide, Australia on January 12, 2009. Jean Keene (85) Alaskan woman known as the "Eagle Lady" who gained national acclaim for feeding hundreds of eagles at her home in the winter. Keene suffered from breast cancer, heart troubles, and lung problems and died in Homer, Alaska on January 12, 2009.

Sir Dai Llewellyn (62) British socialite who (with his younger brother, landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn, best known for his eight-year affair with Princess Margaret) became a well-known media personality from the '60s onward because of highly publicized relationships with writer Tessa Dahl (daughter of US actress Patricia Neal and the late author Roald Dahl) and actor Orson Welles's youngest daughter Beatrice. Sir Dai died of bone cancer in London, England on January 13, 2009. Roberto Lopez Jr. (4) Los Angeles boy fatally struck by a stray bullet in the upper torso when he was caught in the crossfire of an apparent gang-related drive-by shooting on the sidewalk near his home in the downtown Echo Park neighborhood. Police said occupants of a passing car were involved in a violent confrontation with a local gang member standing on the street when several shots were fired from about 100 yards away. The bullet that hit the child likely was intended for someone in the car. Lopez died in Los Angeles, California on January 13, 2009.

Curtis Moore (40) Texas man who became the first inmate executed in the nation's most active capital punishment state in 2009 for the capital murders of Roderick Moore (24) and LaTanya Boone (21), both found shot to death in a roadside ditch across from a Forth Worth elementary school during a series of drug-related robberies in 1995. That same night, Moore and his then-teenage nephew drove to another part of town, where they carried out the abduction, robbery, and shooting of Darrel Hoyle (21) and Henry Truevillian Jr. (20) before setting their car on fire and leaving them to die. Hoyle miraculously survived. Moore was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas on January 14, 2009. Sports Russ Craft (89) member of the Philadelphia Eagles' 1948-49 championship teams who shared the NFL record of four interceptions in a game with 17 other players. Craft was a defensive back and halfback who played for the Eagles (1946-53) and for the Pittsburgh Steelers (1953-55).

His record four interceptions came against the Chicago Cardinals in September 1950. He died in Wellsburg, West Virginia on January 13, 2009. Albino Friaca Cordoso (84) Brazilian soccer star who scored for Brazil in its 2-1 loss to Uruguay in the final game of the 1950 World Cup. Friaca was known for his speed and ability to play any attacking position. He had been hospitalized for six weeks with pneumonia but died of organ failure in Itaperuna, Brazil on January 12, 2009. Preston Gomez (86) longtime Los Angeles Angels scouting consultant, a former third-base coach for the Dodgers when they won the 1965 World Series. Gomez became the second big-league manager born in Latin America when he was hired by the expansion San Diego Padres in 1969 and later managed the Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros. He died nine months after being seriously injured in a freak accident at a Blythe, California gas station, in Fullerton, California on January 13, 2009.

Tommy Jones (54) first-base coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks for parts of the 2004 season and the team's player development director (1998-2004). A former minor league player and manager, Jones worked as director of baseball operations for the fall league in 2008. He died of brain cancer in Phoenix, Arizona on January 15, 2009. Dave Mahan (61) member of an investors' group that owned 2003 Kentucky Derby winner Funny Cide. Mahan was a Waterbury caterer and a principal of Sackatoga Stable. He owned a 20% interest in Funny Cide, the first New York-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derbyâ€”and the first gelding since Clyde van Dusen in 1929. Mahan suffered from a brain tumor and had been hospitalized since Dec. 26. He died in Waterbury, Connecticut on January 14, 2009.

Claudio Milar (34) Uruguayan professional football player, a striker/forward on Brazil's top third-division football (soccer) league Brasil de Pelotas, scoring over 100 goals in just over 200 games in recent years. Before joining the team in 2002, Milar began his career on the national youth teams of professional clubs in Montevideo, Brazil, Israel, Tunisia, and Poland. He was killed in a bus accident along with another teammate and a coach in Cangucu, Brazil on January 16, 2009. Wresley ("Red") Rush (81) versatile sportscaster who called games for the Oakland As and other major league baseball organizations and college and professional basketball teams. As the voice of Loyola University of Chicago in the '60s, Rush delivered the memorable "We won! We won! We won the ballgame!" radio call when the Ramblers basketball team defeated two-time defending champion Cincinnati in overtime in the 1963 NCAA championship game. He died of complications from Alzheimer's disease in Moraga, California on January 11, 2009. Daryl K.

("Doc") Seaman (86) co-owner of the Calgary Flames and part of the original group that brought the team from Atlanta. Seaman was one of six businessmen who helped to bring the Flames to Calgary in 1980. He also was a prominent figure in Canada's oil and gas industry. He was invested as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993. He died in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on January 11, 2009.

Question: Which writer, whose works include Rumpole of the Bailey, died in January 2009?
Answer: John Mortimer