Where There's a Will

Where There's a Will by John Mortimer (Viking, 238 pp., $24.95). "At the end of your life," writes John Mortimer, "there may be a natural desire to take stock of your possessions and decide what, if anything, can be dusted off and usefully passed on." Following the example of W.B. Yeats, whose bequests consisted of "learned Italian things ... and Poet's imaginings," Mortimer is certain that the most valuable things he can pass on to his loved ones are a lifetime of experiences and insights.

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The great challenge to a writer, Mortimer points out, is to live a rich life in order to have something interesting to write about. Called to the bar in his twenties, Mortimer, whose alter ego Horace Rumpole is well-known to Americans, immediately came into contact with clients who were ready to pour out their life's secrets. "I was fortunate enough to meet murderers, con men, contract killers, politicians with unrevealed scandals and, on one horrible occasion, an assistant hangman."

A prolific novelist and playwright, and an occasional actor, Mortimer devotes one of his chapters to the importance of being a good listener, a skill he sharpened during his years at the bar ("A good half of a barrister's life is spent listening in silence in his chambers room or during a prison visit"). The ability to listen is also central to the success of a writer.

Mortimer brings a witty conversational style to an impressive array of subjects, from detecting a lying witness ("The worst liars may remember to wear ties and suits, speak considerately in time with the judge's pencil, call him 'My Lord' and survive a scorching cross-examination") to the dangers of computer technology ("In schools learning to manipulate these devices seems to have crowded out lessons in history, literature and music") and the difficulty of achieving true happiness ("Like nervous animals, our natural state is one of anxiety"). Well versed in both the law and literature, he draws effectively from the works of, among others, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Byron, and J.S. Mill.

Mortimer's politics lean strongly to the left, though one of his earliest warnings is to "avoid those whose views on every subject can be confidently predicted after you have discovered what they think about one." He calls the predictability of political viewpoints the "domino theory," and to demonstrate how this theory can be flouted, he offers his own experience leading the wheelchair battalion of country dwellers protesting the Labour government's threat to ban fox-hunting at a massive rally in central London.

A militant civil libertarian, Mortimer reserves some of his harshest rhetoric for the enforcers of political correctness, who have added "causing offence" to their list of pleasures to criminalize, in addition to "smoking, fox hunting, and the enjoyment of a motor-car." Contending that vigorous adversarial debate is central to both parliamentary and legal systems, he notes that "a state in which everyone tiptoed around whispering for fear of hurting somebody's feelings would be dull beyond human endurance."

There is the occasional disappointment, such as Mortimer's views on terrorism, which do not distinguish between those who commit it and those who fight it. And one suspects that his contempt for entrepreneurs and consumer choice in contemporary British society (which he associates with both the Thatcher era and New Labour) are as related to upper-class snobbery as to politics. Still, we should be grateful that John Mortimer has shared with us a wealth of useful advice based on the experiences of a life richly lived.

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