RUMPOLE!!

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I just discovered him. I ordered the first omnibus. Any experts/fans out there ready-made to help me start drooling over the hour when I'll actually have time to read the thing?

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 00:55 (twenty years ago)

It's a very long time since I read any Rumpole but I read most of them at one time. They are entertaining if that's what you're in the mood for, and of course very cheering. They become a little too formulaic once you have read a few - they don't quite transcend their limitations like Wodehouse, a huge influence and obvious comparison. I parcticularly like the way that Palgrave's Golden Treasury, (or perhaps more precisely, the Wordsworth selection) is used to do much the same job for Mortimer as Shakespeare does for Wodehouse. So Rumpole starts "like a guilty thing/Upon a fearful summons" at the unexpected appearance of She Who Must Be Obeyed and so on. I'm not sure I would like to defend the pleasure I get from that sort of thing but I do find it very appealing, and Mortimer does it beautifully.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 30 March 2005 08:16 (twenty years ago)

Isn't Rumpole a devotee of Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse rather then Palgrave? Either way frankie OTM. It's all jolly good comfortingly predictable fun.

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 09:26 (twenty years ago)

I tried reading one but it was dreadful so I gave it to my mum. It was a recent one.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 11:14 (twenty years ago)

PS. This was preparation for our works quiz night against a load of 'Rumpoles of the Bailey' in a place called the Bumhole. We didn't go in the end.

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 11:15 (twenty years ago)

Quiller-Couch is of course right, Archel. It was a long time ago I read them and my memory is not the best. Rumpole contemptuous of later, inferior editions infected by modernism. I'm still pretty sure that the lion's share of the quotations are from Wordsworth, though.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 30 March 2005 11:22 (twenty years ago)

I think they probably are, yes.

Not going to places called The Bumhole seems like a principle one should cling to in life, Peter.

― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

I am a fan of Mortimer's "Paradise Postponed", if you get a chance to read that. It's a curious thing, quite dated and very English, but utterly charming.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

they don't quite transcend their limitations like Wodehouse

this is key, i think. my father is a massive fan and has a shelf full of rumpole books, one of which i attempted to read some years ago at his urging. it wasn't bad, it just didn't make much of an impression on me as anything other than a collection of very english one-liners.

― lauren (laurenp), Wednesday, 30 March 2005 15:18 (twenty years ago)

What I hear is "good hangover/stuck in car/stuck in Wisconsin for Xmas with relatives talking nonstop in the background reading," which makes me happy. Thanks! I know not to order another volume now.

Sigh. Will there ever be another man like Plummy? Pardon my familiarity.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, 31 March 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

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