Rumpole: The Primrose Path & other stories

Nov 8, 2025 7:19 AM

Author:John Mortimer,Full Cast

Timothy West takes on the role of Rumpole in these four delightful dramas featuring the wily barrister

Rumpole and the Primrose Path

Rumpole exposes criminal practices at the nursing home where he was sent to recuperate after a heart attack, leaving him in dire need of claret, cheroots and good company.

Rumpole and the Scales of Justice

When Rumpole defends a senior policeman in court, his love for Shakespeare’s Othello and his old acquaintances in the south London criminal fraternity prove very useful.

Rumpole and the Vanishing Juror

Rumpole’s admiration for the integrity of the Old Bailey jury is legendary – but he is mystified when his most promising juror in a murder trial suddenly disappears…

Rumpole Redeemed

Invited to dinner at his local prison, Rumpole solves the conundrum of whether an ex-con can be reformed – while also seeking redemption himself.

Timothy West stars as Rumpole, with Prunella Scales as Hilda, Michael Cochrane as Sam Ballard, Nigel Anthony as Claude Erskine-Brown and Sophie Thompson as Luci Gribble.

Reviews

Exquisite craftsmanship

—— Guardian

An exquisite novel about four sisters living though a turbulent decade, during the Forties and Fifties, I'd put it in the 10 greatest books of the 20th century

—— David Mitchell

One of the books I return to frequently is Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters: a near-perfect novel

—— Hanya Yanagihara

A complex, detailed and agreeably gossipy book...The author's obvious nostalgia for this vanished world does not prevent him from looking objectively at its darker side and this, together with his artful blend of the exotic and the mundane, creates an absorbing and richly textured story

—— Sunday Times

A subtle, moving novel

—— The Times

A classic novel of a whole country about to turn on the terrible hinge of the war into modernity; its tone is elegiac and bleak

—— Observer

The work of Tanizaki offers to us in the West one of the most valuable keys to understanding the Japanese crisis of identity

—— Independent

An extraordinary book which can truly be said to break new ground

—— New Yorker

The outstanding Japanese novelist of the century...The Makioka Sisters is his greatest book

—— Edmund White, , New York Times Book Review

Sensitive, thoughtful and rich with the spoils of its author's plunder of the past

—— Irish Independent

This is a tremendous book: affecting, intelligent, ironic, humane and utterly convincing. It is also extremely funny

—— Spectator

A brilliant read

—— Dermot O'Leary , Waitrose Weekend

A rich, imaginative, vividly characterised rite-of-passage tale

—— Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times

High-octane adventure accompanies ingenious plotting

—— The Times

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