The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole

Dec 27, 2025 6:51 PM

Author:John Mortimer

The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole - a delightful novel starring John Mortimer's iconic character

'One of the great comic creations of modern times' Evening Standard

ASBOs may be the pride and joy of New Labour, but they don't cut much ice with Horace Rumpole - he takes the old-fashioned view that if anyone is going to be threatened with a restriction of their liberty then some form of legal proceeding ought to be gone through first. Not that Hilda agrees, of course, but she's too busy completing her memoirs to dissuade him from taking an interest when one of the Timson children is given an ASBO for playing football in the street. And pretty soon he realizes something fishy is going on. Why are the residents pursuing their vendetta against the Timson boy quite so strongly? Could they have a sinister reason for not wanting him on their street?

John Mortimer's hilarious Rumpole novel, which fans of Sherlock Holmes and P.G. Wodehouse will love, sees the magician of the Old Bailey at his unpredictable and brilliant best.

Sir John Mortimer was a barrister, playwright and novelist. His fictional trilogy about the inexorable rise of an ambitious Tory MP in the Thatcher years (Paradise Postponed, Titmuss Regained and The Sound of Trumpets) has recently been republished in Penguin Classics, together with his autobiography Clinging to the Wreckage and his play A Voyage round My Father. His most famous creation was the barrister Horace Rumpole, who featured in four novels and around eighty short stories. His books in Penguin include: The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole; The Collected Stories of Rumpole; The First Rumpole Omnibus; Rumpole and the Angel of Death; Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders; Rumpole and the Primrose Path; Rumpole and the Reign of Terror; Rumpole and the Younger Generation; Rumpole at Christmas; Rumpole Rests His Case; The Second Rumpole Omnibus; Forever Rumpole; In Other Words; Quite Honestly and Summer's Lease.

Reviews

Wild, brave and funny

—— Sunday Times

Welsh is brilliant at what he does... This is his most readable and memorable novel since Trainspotting

—— Independent on Sunday

His most ambitious, but also his most complete and engaging work to date... arguably, his best book

—— Times Literary Supplement

Full of incident, mad, crackling dialogue, attractively appalling characters and some of the funniest and rudest sex scenes I have read since Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint

—— Sunday Times

With razor-sharp dialogue, a powerful odour of ordinary desperation and an incisive understanding of what makes these men's friendship tick, Welsh is at the top of his game

—— The Face

Welsh slams back into form with his sixth book - all brutal sentimentality and bleak, edgy humour... You have a coming-of-age story carved out with a broken bottle

—— Elle

Easily his best book since the one that made his name

—— Independent on Sunday

I've never felt so attached to characters as I did in that book and have definitely never stayed awake all night sobbing after reading a book, but I did when I read that

—— Hollie McNish , Good Housekeeping

Morrison writes about endless sex without missing a beat, partly because his warm, witty, poignant novel is as much about 21st-century consumption as its is consummation

—— Metro

Seedy and undeniably erotic, this is the best book on sex since John Updike's Couples

—— Arena

As dirty a debut as Adam Thirlwell's brilliant Politics.... And just as funny and thought-provoking

—— Daily Sport

A daring, poetic, provocative, cleansing novel

—— De Volkskrant

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

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