This book is THE book you need to read to help you understand Rumpole’s career and life. He writes it within the confines of his chambers and tells us by referring to conversations he has with various members of his chambers who insist they are important and therefore must see it before publication. We get to see how Rumpole married She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed and learn to understand why she is such a big influence on him. Basically, there’s a lot of background information here that you really should read in order to understand some of the references Rumpole makes.

One part of the book which should probably be of more importance is the actual Penge Bungalow Murders and how Rumpole ended up defending Simon Jerold. Young Jerold was supposed to have killed his father and another RAF hero but Rumpole was the only one who would listen and make the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Rumpole was the one who went behind his Head of Chambers back and investigated. Jerold was so buoyed by Rumpole he fired Rumpole’s future father-in-law and made Rumpole do all the barrister type stuff.

I enjoyed this book and not just because I enjoy Rumpole of the Bailey and not because my Dad enjoyed Rumpole and therefore this is a connection to him, one I can’t have since his death many years ago, I enjoyed it because it is well written. I enjoyed it due to all the by-play and I enjoyed reading about the Penge Bungalow Murders, those murders Rumpole refers to so many times. It is good to see how Rumpole went about not romancing Mrs Rumpole and to see that despite being a rebel in his youth he was still snared by She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. Mrs Rumpole had a fine mind in her youth and obviously should have been a barrister herself but it was the wrong time and so she did the next best thing for those days and married a clever up-and-coming young barrister making sure she helped him in whatever subtle ways she could. This book gives us hints as to how she did all of this, also directing us to understand her better than in any other book. While it was good to finally read about Penge Bungalow and understand how and why it had such a big influence on Rumpole I enjoyed the other bits more.