Sir John Mortimer is a playwright, novelist and former practising barrister. During the war he worked with the Crown Film Unit and published a number of novels, before turning to theatre. He has written many film scripts, and plays for both radio and television, including A Voyage Round My Father, the Rumpole plays, which won him the British Academy Writer of the Year Award, and the adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Many of his Rumpole stories are published in Penguin, as are two volumes of his acclaimed autobiography, Clinging to the Wreckage and Murderers and Other Friends, and the bestselling Summer of a Dormouse. His novels include Summer's Lease, Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets. Sir John lives with his wife and their youngest daughter in what was once his father's house in the Chilterns. He received a knighthood for his services to the arts in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours list.