Rumpole of the Bailey Rumpole of the Bailey Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an elderly London barrister who defended a broad variety of clients, often underdogs. The TV series led to the stories being presented in other media including books and radio. The "Bailey" of the title is a reference to the Central Criminal Court, the "Old Bailey". While certain biographical details are slightly different in the original television series and the subsequent book series, Horace Rumpole has a number of definite
Rumpole of the Bailey an age of around 70 years, and past events in his life have been retconned to fit each story's time frame. Thus, in the books published in 1996 and before, he proposed to Hilda in 1938, and in books published in 2003 and after, it appears that he neither became a barrister nor met Hilda until after World War II ended in 1945. "Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders", containing his first unled case and his engagement to Hilda, takes place in the early 1950s, entirely inconsistent with the early stories. Since 1988, when Phyllida Erskine-Brown became a QC and