John Mortimer
Playwright and lawyer John Mortimer, creator of the highly popular PBS series Rumpole of the Bailey, is the author most recently of The Summer of a Dormouse (Viking Press, $25). Here he chooses his six favorite books.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (Touchstone, $11). A beautifully written memory of when Hemingway was an unknown writer in Paris.
Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey (Random House, $13). Strachey is the one true genius of Bloomsbury. His prose is here to be loved and learned from. He is at his best elegantly pricking the bubble-like reputations of Victorian monuments.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Scoop by Evelyn Waugh (Little, Brown & Co., $14). This is a wholly successful novel, continually funny but with moments of sadness when the author of “The Countryside Column” becomes a war correspondent by mistake.
Don Juan by Lord Byron (Viking Penguin, $15). An unfinished novel written in complex stanzas-romantic, ironic, and satirical. The whole work celebrates his love of women and his hatred of hypocrisy and the Lake poets. He thought of Coleridge explaining metaphysics to the world and wrote, “I wish he would explain his explanation.”
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (Alfred A. Knopf, $46). Impossible to cope with it all, perhaps, but Gibbon’s account of Christianity taking over the Roman Empire is a masterpiece of ironic comedy. He tells us that all the religions practiced in the Empire were considered equally true by the people, equally false by the philosopher, and equally useful by the magistrate. This produced an admirable degree of religious concord.
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (Vintage, $11). Chandler wrote his paragraphs on separate slips of paper to make sure he had something comic or surprising in each one. Most of the time he succeeds brilliantly. Revel in the writing, and don’t spend too much time trying to work out the plot.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Zohran Mamdani: the young progressive likely to be New York City's next mayor
In The Spotlight The policies and experience that led to his meteoric rise
-
The best film reboots of all time
The Week Recommends Creativity and imagination are often required to breathe fresh life into old material
-
'More must be done'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Anne Hillerman's 6 favorite books with Native characters
Feature The author recommends works by Ramona Emerson, Craig Johnson, and more
-
John Kenney's 6 favorite books that will break your heart softly
Feature The novelist recommends works by John le Carré, John Kennedy Toole, and more
-
Andrea Long Chu's 6 favorite books for people who crave new ideas
Feature The book critic recommends works by Rachel Cusk, Sigmund Freud, and more
-
Bryan Burrough's 6 favorite books about Old West gunfighters
Feature The Texas-raised author recommends works by T.J. Stiles, John Boessenecker, and more
-
Tash Aw's 6 favorite books about forbidden love
Feature The Malaysian novelist recommends works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and more
-
Richard Bausch's 6 favorite books that are worth rereading
Feature The award-winning author recommends works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and more
-
Marya E. Gates' 6 favorite books about women filmmakers
Feature The film writer recommends works by Julie Dash, Sofia Coppola, and more
-
Laurence Leamer's 6 favorite books that took courage to write
Feature The author recommends works by George Orwell, Truman Capote and more