Rumpole of the Bailey - Audiobook and BBC Radio Drama Collection - John Mortimer Audiobook

Written by John Mortimer
Read by Bill Wallis, Robert Hardy, Patrick Tull, Rob Inglis, Tony Britton, Timothy West, Maurice Denham, Desmond Barrit, Full Cast
Format: Mixed
Bitrate: Variable
Unabridged

Horace Rumpole - dishevelled barrister at law, drinker of claret and smoker of cigars, inveterate quoter of Wordsworth and eternal defender of the underdog - is one of the greatest English comic characters ever created.

This is the complete collection of Rumpole stories, introducing us to the legal triumphs that made the Old Bailey Hack’s name, along with a host of choice villains, frequent forays to Pommeroy’s wine bar and, of course, his formidable, magisterial wife Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed.

The audiobooks were sourced from peterg23’s torrent over on Demonoid. This was originally 1 mp3 per CD. I losslessly reformatted it with mp3directcut into 1 mp3 per story or chapter to make finding individual stories easy.

They were all ripped from CD apart from Rumpole à la Carte which is a cassette rip which sounds a little muddy but perfectly intelligible.

If you spot any errors which seem fixable, please let me know in the comments below. I’m petty sure I must have left an “end of side one” announcement in there somewhere…

The radio dramas were recorded by me from BBC iPlayer, with the exception of Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces (torrent) and the first four Timothy West dramas (Audible).

THE UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK COLLECTION

1978 - Rumpole of the Bailey - Robert Hardy
1979 - The Trials of Rumpole - Bill Wallis
1980 - Rumpole’s Return - Robert Hardy
1981 - Rumpole for the Defence - Bill Wallis
1983 - Rumpole and the Golden Thread - Bill Wallis
1987 - Rumpole’s Last Case - Bill Wallis
1988 - Rumpole and the Age of Miracles - Patrick Tull
1990 - Rumpole à la Carte - Rob Inglis
1992 - Rumpole on Trial - Timothy West
1994 - Rumpole and the Angel of Death - Bill Wallis
2001 - Rumpole Rests His Case - Tony Britton
2002 - Rumpole and the Primrose Path - Bill Wallis
2004 - Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders - Bill Wallis
2006 - Rumpole and the Reign of Terror - Bill Wallis
2007 - The Anti-social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole - Bill Wallis
2009 - Rumpole at Christmas - Bill Wallis

Note - Rumpole at Christmas contains an extra short story at the end, ‘Rumpole and the Widow Twankey’ read for BBC Radio 4 by Timothy West.

THE RADIO DRAMA COLLECTION

1980 - Rumpole: The Splendours and Miseries of an Old Bailey Hack starring Maurice Denham. 13 x 30 minutes

2001 - Rumpole and the Old Familiar Faces - starring Desmond Barrit. 1 x 90 minutes

2004 - 2009 - Rumpole - starring Timothy West & Prunella Scales. 12 x 45 minutes.

The Timothy West Rumpole series was rebooted after Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders and continued focusing on a much younger Rumpole starring first Benedict Cumberbatch and later Julian Rhind-Tutt as Young Rumpole. They adapted stories written about a man in his 70s and pretended they were about Rumpole in his prime. IMHO they didn’t work at all. I hated them and they are not included here.

If you are a masochist who really wants them, they are all due to be collected together for an Audible release in December 2022.

As a bonus I’ve also included John Mortimer’s ‘The Trials of Marshall Hall’ - Five true stories about a lawyer who inspired John Mortimer.