Penelope Mortimer

• Name — Penelope Mortimer • Birth Name — Penelope Ruth Fletcher • Birthplace — Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales • Born — 19 September 1918 • Died — 19 October 1999 • Place of death — Kensington, England • Occupation — Journalist • Children — 6, including Caroline and Jeremy

Mortimer was born Penelope Ruth Fletcher in Rhyl, Flintshire (now Denbighshire), Wales, the younger daughter of Amy Caroline Fletcher and the Rev A. F. G. Fletcher, an Anglican clergyman. Her father had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate Soviet persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. He abused her sexually. 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'." Her father frequently changed his parish and she attended numerous schools. She was educated 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. She left University College, London after one year. Penelope married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937. They had two daughters, one of whom was the actress Caroline Mortimer. She also had two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler. 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. 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. In the 1950s and 1960s the Mortimers were frequently photographed at London high-society events. Penelope had frequent bouts of depression. In 1962, the same year The Pumpkin Eater was written, she became pregnant for the eighth time. At the age of 42 and already the mother of six, she agreed at the urging of her husband to have an abortion and undergo sterilisation. She is said to have been happy with the decision, but during her convalescence, she discovered her husband's affair with Wendy Craig, with whom he had a son. The Mortimers divorced in 1971.

Penelope Mortimer died of cancer in Kensington, London, at the age of 81.

• Johanna (1947, as Penelope Dimont) • A Villa in Summer (1954) • The Bright Prison (1956) • Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958) - reissue Persephone Books - paperback • The Pumpkin Eater (1962) - reissue Penguin Modern Classics (2015) - paperback/ebook • My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968) - reissue Virago Modern Classics (1989) - paperback - out of print but available secondhand • The Home (1971) - reissue British Library Women Writers (2023) - paperback/ebook • Long Distance (1974) • The Handyman (1983)

• About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979) • About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)

• Queen Elizabeth: A Portrait of the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition 1995 subtitled An Alternative Portrait of Her Life And Times

• With Love and Lizards (1957), co-authored with John Mortimer

• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), co-written with John Mortimer • Portrait of a Marriage (1990), BBC television adaptation of Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson For reissues see publisher and retailer websites.