John Mortimer

Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author.

Early life

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 hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi, but still pursued his career. Clifford's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.

John Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, in Oxford, and Harrow School, 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 Brasenose buildings had been requisitioned for the war effort. In July 1942, at the end of his second year, he was asked to leave Oxford by the Dean of Christ Church, after romantic letters to a Bradfield sixth-former, Quentin Edwards, later a QC, were discovered by the young man's housemaster. He graduated from Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts degree in October 1943.

John Mortimer (agriculturalist)

John Mortimer (c. 1656 – 1736) was an English merchant, and writer on agriculture, known for The whole Art of Husbandry, in the way of Managing and Improving of Land published in London in 1707.

Biography

The only son and heir of Mark Mortimer, by his wife Abigail Walmesly of Blackmore in Essex, he was born in London about 1656. He received a commercial education, and became a prosperous merchant on Tower Hill.

In November 1693, at the age of about 43, he bought the estate of Toppingo Hall, Hatfield Peverel, Essex, which he improved; a number of cedar trees planted by him were still in there in the 19th century. Mortimer became Fellow of the Royal Society in December 1705.

Mortimer was married three times. His first wife, Dorothy, born at Hursley, near Winchester, on 1 August 1660, was the ninth child of Richard Cromwell, and it is supposed that the ex-protector's return to England in 1680 was prompted by a desire to be present at the wedding. She died in childbirth (14 May 1681) within a year of the marriage. He married, secondly, Sarah, daughter of Sir John Tippets, knight, surveyor of the navy, by whom he had a son and a daughter. Thirdly, Mortimer married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Sanders of Derbyshire, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. The second son was Cromwell Mortimer.

John Mortimer (disambiguation)

John Mortimer (1923–2009) was a British writer.

John Mortimer may also refer to:

See also