"Print the legend." John Mortimer/ Gyles Brandreth's Oscar Wilde

One of my comfort reads is the Rumpole series by John Mortimer, and it is also one of my favourite TV serials. They are all available on DVD these days, from the more sombre original one-off television play to the seven more humorous series that followed. Mortimer kept writing stories beyond the TV adaptations, almost to the end of his life. Though vastly entertaining, they are far from flawless. The same could be said of their creator. I have just finished reading John Mortimer: The devil’s advocate, an unauthorised biography by Graham Lord. Lord is a biographer and writer with an impressive track record but I was worried by both the fact it was an unauthorised bio and the tone of the opening chapter: it seemed I had a hatchet job on my hands.

Biographies are tricky things, especially for the recent dead or the still alive. While unauthorised bios can indeed be hatchet jobs, authorised ones can be hagiographies, and it is difficult to judge which gives us the more accurate picture of their subject. As time goes by a more subjective view can often be obtained, but there are still those people that will always be controversial.

However, this book was not the book I feared it would be. It is a harsh judgement on Mortimer, at times waspish or bitchy, but it is also gives plenty of space to Mortimer’s achievements and those who have a more positive view of him. Part of Lord’s anger comes as a result of Mortimer first approving the book, providing two extended interviews, and then withdrawing his approval and trying to prevent anyone talking to the writer; censorship from the champion of free speech. It also has the air of a rejected lover; Lord believed in Mortimer’s popular image as an intelligent, cuddly, liberal, witty raconteur but discovered a darker side; immature, snobbish, selfish, mean and hypocritical. In the end I found the picture convincing – all these things are true. We are nothing if not contradictory creatures. If Mortimer was a flawed lawyer, flawed writer, and a flawed man, what is he but what we all are?

And certainly his assessment of his writing tallied with my own. Mortimer’s work, in novels, plays and stories, is wildly uneven. Even the Rumpole stories provide clear evidence of being rush jobs with little revision or care. I was so relieved when towards the end of his life Mortimer finally wrote the story of Rumpole’s first triumph, the Penge Bunglalow Murders, that the novel showed the writer and his character at their considerable best. That said, like Sherlock Holmes, we read the Rumpole stories because the characters are so compelling, even when the stories may not be.

I’ve also had a pleasurable few hours reading Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde and the dead man’s smile. This is one of a series that Brandreth has written featuring Oscar Wilde as detective. Brandeth draws on his knowledge of Wilde’s life and character, and evident love of Sherlock Holmes, to create a book that is fun and entertaining.  Wilde was a friend of Conan Doyle, who features in the novel, and Brandeth suggests here that Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older, smarter and larger brother, was based on Wilde. It is the sort of theory for which there is no proof but if it isn’t true, should be, and historical fantasy fiction such as this is the perfect place to air it. Perhaps this is not a book for the ages, but it is one I thoroughly enjoyed.