A Voyage Round My Father A Voyage Round My Father A Voyage Round My Father is an autobiographical play by John Mortimer, later adapted for television. The first version of the play appeared as a series of three half-hour sketches for BBC radio in 1963. It then became a television play with Ian Richardson playing Mortimer, Tim Good as the young Mortimer while Mark Dignam played his blind barrister father. Mortimer then adapted it for the stage and Alec Guinness was the father and Jeremy Brett the son at the Haymarket Theatre in 1971. Mortimer later (1982) turned the play back into a film for
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