Sir John Mortimer was a novelist, playwright and barrister. The first book featuring his most famous character, Horace Rumpole, was published by Penguin in 1980, and Mortimer went on to publish a dozen collections of Rumpole stories as well as a handful of novels, culminating in 2007 in RUMPOLE MISBEHAVES. He was knighted in 1998 for his services to the arts and died in January 2009.