Howard McKern Howard McKern Howard Hamlet Gordon McKern (23 March 1917 - 8 June 2009) was an Australian analytical and organic chemist, museum administrator who was Deputy Director of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and President of the Royal Society of New South Wales. McKern was the son of James Gordon McKern (1888–1975) a mining engineer, geologist and petrologist who became a technical executive with the petroleum company Mobil and Edith Mary Hamlet (1890–1967), daughter of William Mogford Hamlet. McKern was born in Mosman, New South Wales and educated at Newington College (1931–1935). In the Leaving Certificate Examination he was
John Mortimer in 1975. Although not Mortimer's first choice of actor (in an interview on the DVD set, he said he wanted Alistair Sim -- "but he was dead"), Leo McKern played the character with gusto and proved popular; accordingly, the idea was developed into a series, "Rumpole of the Bailey", for Thames Television in which McKern again took the lead role. Mortimer also wrote a series of Rumpole books. In September–October 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast four new 45-minute Rumpole plays by Mortimer with Timothy West in the title role. Mortimer also dramatised many of the real-life cases of the barrister