Rumpole

This is a selection of short stories about Horace Rumpole, an aging Old Bailey barrister who defends the apparently guilty, quotes Wordsworth, and drinks cheap claret at Pomeroy's. The cases send him into chambers politics, family rows, and trials before impatient judges, while at home he contends with Hilda, whom he calls She Who Must Be Obeyed. Recurring colleagues, pupils, and the Timson clan of petty criminals supply the supporting cast. Each story is a self-contained brief rather than a serial plot. The book is comic legal fiction in Rumpole's first-person voice, not a procedural study of the criminal law.

Bound in grey cloth, spine titling on a dark red panel, covers printed with pictures in dark red and silver by Cox. Pale grey endleaves. Pale grey or dark red slipcase. 24x.816.8cm.