Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an ageing London barrister who defends any and all clients. It has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes. While certain biographical details are slightly different in the original television series and the subsequent book series, Horace Rumpole has a number of definite character traits that are constant. First and foremost, Rumpole loves the courtroom. Despite attempts by his friends and... family to get him to move on to a more respectable position for his age, such as a Queen's Counsel or a Circuit Judge , he only enjoys the simple pleasure of defending his clients at the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court: "the honour of being an Old Bailey Hack," as he describes his work. A devotee of Arthur Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse, he often quotes Wordsworth .
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