In these cases I was, for a brief moment, in the Public Eye, or at least my name seemed almost a permanent feature of the News of the World, but when I come to look back on that period of my life at the Bar it all seems to have happened to another Rumpole an eager young barrister whom I can scarcely recognize and whom I am not at all sure I would like, at least not enough to spend a whole book with him. When I first considered putting pen to paper in this matter of my life, I thought I must begin with the great cases of my comparative youth, the 'Penge Bungalow Murder', where I gained an acquittal alone and without a leader, or the 'Great Brighton Benefit Club Forgery', which I contrived to win by reason of my exhaustive study of typewriters. Hilda Rumpole (known to me only as She Who Must Be Obeyed) and father to Nicholas Rumpole (lecturer in social studies at the University of Baltimore, I have always been extremely proud of Nick) I, who have a mind full of old murders, legal anecdotes and memorable fragments of the Oxford Book of English Verse (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's edition) together with a dependable knowledge of bloodstains, blood groups, fingerprints, and forgery by typewriter I, who am now the oldest member of my Chambers, take up my pen at this advanced age during a lull in business (there's not much crime about, all the best villains seem to be off on holiday in the Costa Brava), in order to write my reconstruction's of some of my recent triumphs (including a number of recent disasters) in the Courts of Law, hoping thereby to turn a bob or two which won't be immediately grabbed by the taxman, or my clerk Henry, or by She Who Must Be Obeyed, and perhaps give some sort of entertainment to those who, like myself, have found in British justice a life-long subject of harmless fun. I, Horace Rumpole, barrister at law, 68 next birthday, Old Bailey Hack, husband to Mrs. John Mortimer - Rumpole 1 - Rumpole of The Bailey

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