Penelope Mortimer

Mortimer was born Penelope Ruth Fletcher in Rhyl, Flintshire (now Denbighshire), Wales,[1] the younger daughter of Amy Caroline Fletcher and the Rev A. F. G. Fletcher, an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate Soviet persecution of the Russian church.[2][3] He abused her sexually.[4]

Mortimer later wrote of her father: "I think he was a clergyman for one reason only; there was nothing else – as Nellie Fletcher's second son – he could possibly have been! As a small boy, bullied and teased by six sisters and four brothers, he sat under the nursery table chanting 'Mama, papa, all the children are disagreeable except me', to the tune of Gentle Jesus'."[2]

Her father frequently changed his parish and she attended numerous schools. She was educated across the country, at Croydon High School, the New School, Streatham, Blencathra, Rhyl Garden School, Lane End, St Elphin's School for Daughters of the Clergy, and the Central Educational Bureau for Women.[2] She left University College, London after one year.[5] [3]

Penelope married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937. They had two daughters,[3] including the actress Caroline Mortimer. She also had two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.[6] She met the barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him on 27 August 1949, the day that her divorce from Dimont became absolute.[1][6] Together they had a daughter and a son, Jeremy Mortimer. Their relationship was said to have been happy at first, but soon grew stormy, and from the mid-1950s onward John had a series of extramarital affairs.[1] [6]

In the 1950s and 1960s the Mortimer couple were frequently photographed at London high society events,[6][7] but behind this façade Penelope had frequent bouts of depression. In 1962, the same year The Pumpkin Eater was written, she became pregnant for the eighth time and already acting as a mother of six at the age of 42, she agreed to an abortion and sterilisation at John Mortimer's urging.[1][6] She is said to have been happy with the decision, but during her convalescence, she discovered her husband's affair with Wendy Craig, by whom he had a son.[6] They divorced in 1971.[6]

Mortimer wrote over a dozen novels during her career, focusing on upper middle-class life in British society.[7] She had one novel, Johanna, published under the name Penelope Dimont.[6] Then as Penelope Mortimer she wrote A Villa in Summer (1954, Michael Joseph), which received critical acclaim. Subsequent novels included Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958, republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962), which dealt with a troubled marriage and had success as a film released in 1964 starring Anne Bancroft.

Meanwhile Mortimer worked freelance as a journalist, her work and stories appearing regularly in The New Yorker.[6] She served as an agony aunt for the Daily Mail under the pseudonym Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.

Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed it was rejected, and eventually published by Viking in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon, in his obituary of her in The Guardian, called it "the most astute biography of a royal since Lytton Strachey was at work. Penelope had approached her subject as somebody in the public eye, whose career might as well be recorded as if she were a normal human being."[5]

Mortimer wrote two volumes of autobiography. About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize. About Time Too: 1940–1978 followed in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, remains unpublished.[5]

Penelope Mortimer died of cancer in Kensington, London, aged 81.[8]

• Author Profile at Persephone Books
• Daddy's Gone A-Hunting at Persephone Books
• New York Times obituary, 23 October 1999