Very amusing - a great insight into the British Legal system and how it works ( )

These are the author's choices of his best Rumpole stories. He never disappoints. Rumpole is one of the best characters ever! ( )

I've become quite fond of the exploits of Horace Rumpole, a rumpled and curmudgeonly defence barrister in England, esconced in the Old Bailey, who is only intimidated by She Who Must Be Obeyed, a.k.a. Hilda Rumpole. This is a collection of the best of Rumpole, selected by the author himself. The best of these stories show not-oft seen sides of Rumpole, such as "Rumpole and the Children of the Devil", which concludes with Rumpole surprising and delighting She Who Must with a hard-earned skill in ballroom dancing, one of the few times he has been seen to actually do something for her that could be interpreted as romantic. Others show that, while Rumpole is content to be seen as a true cynic about humanity and the law, there are aspects of both that he takes quite seriously and will defend to the hilt. Throw in the usual deliciously droll English humour, and you've got a real treat that I look forward to indulging for a long time to come. ( )

If only I can emulate his sense of humor. Terrific short stories. ( )

What a very fun series of books this must be. I had not read any of them before, or seen the TV shows, and had no idea that this series was the origin of the ideas of referring to one's wife as She Who Must Be Obeyed. This collection of short stories is a sort of overview of the overall series, I think - you pretty much get dropped into the middle, and meet various characters who seem to have personalities, although your acquaintance with them is too short to be really sure. Rumpole's character comes across well; how realistically I couldn't begin to guess, although I would suspect a lawyer with his chutzpah would not have made it for as long as apparently Rumpole has done for most of these stories.

Are the stories any good? They can be compared to Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, I think, where Jeeves and Rumpole have a lot in common, but there is no real equivalent to Bertie Wooster to lend these stories the air of madcap energy that Jeeves stories have. The stories suffer for it. They are parodies, fun little stories that you can't take too seriously, but Rumpole's air of pomposity is a bit jarring. Given time and opportunity, I'll probably read more - I suspect that the overall story arc is one worth following. ( )