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About Time
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
192 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
51 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Mortimer
33 books71 followersEarly life
She was born in Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales, the younger child of an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also sexually abused her. Her father frequently changed his parish, so, consequently, she attended numerous schools. She left University College, London, after only one year.
Adulthood
She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937, and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer, and two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.
She met barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949. Together they had a daughter and a son.
She had one novel, Johanna, published under her name, Penelope Dimont, then as Penelope Mortimer, she authored A Villa in Summer (1954; Michael Joseph). It received critical acclaim. More novels followed.
She was also a freelance journalist, whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker. As an agony aunt for the Daily Mail, she wrote under the nom de plume Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.
Her marriage to John Mortimer was difficult. They both had frequent extramarital affairs. Penelope had six children by four different men. They divorced in 1971. Her relationships with men were the inspiration for the novels, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958; republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962; reissued in 2011 by New York Review Books), which was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. It starred Peter Finch, James Mason and Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar nomination for her role.
Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed, it was rejected so instead Viking published it in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon in his Guardian obituary 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."
She wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940–78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished.
She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington, London, England.
Novels
Johanna (1947) (as Penelope Dimont)
A Villa in Summer (1954)
The Bright Prison (1956)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
The Home (1971)
Long Distance (1974)
The Handyman (1983)
Short story collections
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
Humphrey's Mother
Autobiographies
About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)
Biography
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition published in 1995, subtitled An Alternative Portrait Of Her Life And Times
Travel writing
With Love and Lizards (co-authored with John Mortimer, 1957)
She was born in Rhyl, Flintshire, Wales, the younger child of an Anglican clergyman, who had lost his faith and used the parish magazine to celebrate the Soviet persecution of the Russian church. He also sexually abused her. Her father frequently changed his parish, so, consequently, she attended numerous schools. She left University College, London, after only one year.
Adulthood
She married Charles Dimont, a journalist, in 1937, and they had two daughters, including the actress Caroline Mortimer, and two daughters through extra-marital relationships with Kenneth Harrison and Randall Swingler.
She met barrister and writer John Mortimer while pregnant with the last child and married him in 1949. Together they had a daughter and a son.
She had one novel, Johanna, published under her name, Penelope Dimont, then as Penelope Mortimer, she authored A Villa in Summer (1954; Michael Joseph). It received critical acclaim. More novels followed.
She was also a freelance journalist, whose work appeared regularly in The New Yorker. As an agony aunt for the Daily Mail, she wrote under the nom de plume Ann Temple. In the late 1960s, she replaced Penelope Gilliatt as film critic for The Observer.
Her marriage to John Mortimer was difficult. They both had frequent extramarital affairs. Penelope had six children by four different men. They divorced in 1971. Her relationships with men were the inspiration for the novels, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958; republished in 2008 by Persephone Books) and The Pumpkin Eater (1962; reissued in 2011 by New York Review Books), which was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter. It starred Peter Finch, James Mason and Anne Bancroft, who won an Oscar nomination for her role.
Mortimer continued in journalism, mainly for The Sunday Times, and also wrote screenplays. Her biography of the Queen Mother was commissioned by Macmillan, but when completed, it was rejected so instead Viking published it in 1986. Her former agent Giles Gordon in his Guardian obituary 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."
She wrote two volumes of autobiography, About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography, covering her life until 1939, appeared in 1979 and won the Whitbread Prize, and About Time Too: 1940–78 in 1993. A third volume, Closing Time, is unpublished.
She died from cancer, aged 81, in Kensington, London, England.
Novels
Johanna (1947) (as Penelope Dimont)
A Villa in Summer (1954)
The Bright Prison (1956)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1958)
The Pumpkin Eater (1962)
My Friend Says It's Bulletproof (1968)
The Home (1971)
Long Distance (1974)
The Handyman (1983)
Short story collections
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings (1977)
Humphrey's Mother
Autobiographies
About Time: An Aspect of Autobiography (1979)
About Time Too: 1940–78 (1993)
Biography
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1986), revised edition published in 1995, subtitled An Alternative Portrait Of Her Life And Times
Travel writing
With Love and Lizards (co-authored with John Mortimer, 1957)
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 16, 2023
TW: ableism, sexual and emotional abuse
The 1930s in small town England did not take place in the 20th century. Everything is Victorian and cruel. The utter heartlessness of it all boggles the mind, but Mortimer finds the perfect voice to neither belittle nor patronize her childhood self. Will reread soon.
The 1930s in small town England did not take place in the 20th century. Everything is Victorian and cruel. The utter heartlessness of it all boggles the mind, but Mortimer finds the perfect voice to neither belittle nor patronize her childhood self. Will reread soon.
December 31, 2018
In 10 short, brisk chapters Mortimer covers the first 2 decades of her life and ends, rather abruptly, on her twenty-first birthday in the middle of WWII. The second and last child of a mismatched couple, Penelope didn't have a particularly happy childhood, but feels sorrier for her brother Paul, who was sent to boarding school the minute she was born, than for herself. It wasn't clear to me how her parents made ends meet since her father, a muddle-headed bully who mildly abused her, had a difficult career as a preacher. On her mother's side the family was rather prosperous, with several uncles running successful businesses like a dairy farm and a rope manufacture. While Mortimer's descriptions of various eccentric relatives and schoolmistresses are unfailingly entertaining, I wish she had concentrated on her own development. How a provincial girl with her haphazard education turned into a sophisticated writer remains a bit of mystery.
April 8, 2016
Not my cup of tea I suppose as others have rated it highly. Story of a young girl whose parents have a strange marriage at best. Chaotic, odd writing for autobiography.
November 3, 2019
While beautifully composed, Penelope Mortimer’s straight-up account of her childhood suffers in comparison with her autobiographical fiction. Reading about the incidents and characters that made their way into her other work is interesting (her father, it turns out, was identical to the frustrated and abusive buffoon she wrote about in SUNDAY LUNCH WITH THE BROWNINGS) but it lacks the extraordinary sense of barely restrained panic. It’s very good, but the other stuff is better.
December 28, 2021
Id tell anyone just read "Pumpkin Eater". Skip the rest
August 12, 2023
A truly bizarre memoir that is a solid wall of negativity and neuroticism as the author describes her low-oxytocin family. Mortimer (wife of John Mortimer, the author of the Rumpole books) write about an existence, but not a life. The prose is perfectly solid. It's just a book about a rotten life. Recommended if you have a taste for the sordid, but if not, not, and I don't blame you.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews