Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.
Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and Clifford Mortimer, a barrister who became blind in 1936, when he banged his head on a tree branch, but still pursued his career. His father's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.
Mortimer was educated at the Drag...
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Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.
Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and Clifford Mortimer, a barrister who became blind in 1936, when he banged his head on a tree branch, but still pursued his career. His father's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.
Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Harrow, where he joined the Communist Party forming a one member cell. Originally Mortimer intended to be an actor, his lead role in the Dragon's 1937 production of Richard II, gained glowing reviews in The Draconian, and then a writer, but his father persuaded him against it advising: "My dear boy, have some consideration for your unfortunate wife ... [the law] gets you out of the house."
At seventeen, he went up to Brasenose College, Oxford where he read law, though he was actually based at Christ Church because the...
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