Penelope Mortimer

Penelope Ruth Mortimer (née Fletcher, 19 September 1918 – 19 October 1999) was a British journalist, biographer, and novelist. She wrote a semi-autobiographic novel in 1962 titled The Pumpkin Eater which was turned into a 1964 film. Anne Bancroft was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as 'Jo Armitage', a character based on herself.

Personal life

Mortimer was born Penelope Ruth Fletcher in Rhyl,Flintshire (now Denbighshire, Wales, the younger daughter of Amy Caroline Fletcher & the Rev AFG Fletcher, a Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also abused her sexually.

Mortimer later wrote of her father: "I think he was a clergyman for one reason only; there was nothing else!, as Nellie Fletcher's second son, he could possibly have been. As a small boy, bullied and teased by six sisters and four brothers, he sat under the nursery table chanting 'Mama, papa, all the children are disagreeable except me', to the tune of Gentle Jesus'."