Editing John Mortimer (section)

==Personal life==
Penelope Fletcher, better known as [[Penelope Mortimer]], met John Mortimer while still married to Charles Dimont and pregnant with their last child. Fletcher married Mortimer on 27 August 1949, the same day her divorce from Dimont became absolute. Together they went on to have a son, [[Jeremy Mortimer]], and a daughter, Sally Silverman.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/oct/22/guardianobituaries1 Obituary: Penelope Ruth Mortimer] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121114153940/http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/1999/oct/22/guardianobituaries1 |date=14 November 2012}}, 1999.</ref> The unstable marriage inspired work by both writers, of which Penelope's novel, ''[[The Pumpkin Eater]]'' (1962), later made into a [[The Pumpkin Eater|film of the same name]], is best known. The couple divorced in 1971 and he married Penelope Gollop in 1972. They had two daughters, [[Emily Mortimer]] (1971), and Rosie Mortimer (1984). He and his second wife lived in the [[Buckinghamshire]] village of [[Turville Heath]]. The split with his first wife had been bitter, but they were on friendly terms by the time of her death in 1999.<ref name="Indie"/>

In September 2004, the ''Sunday Telegraph'' journalist Tim Walker revealed that Mortimer had fathered another son,  Ross Bentley, who was conceived during a secret affair Mortimer had with the English actress [[Wendy Craig]] more than 40 years earlier. He was born in November 1961.<ref name="Indie2">John Walsh [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/wit-flirt-genius-john-mortimer-dies-aged-85-1418233.html "Wit, flirt, genius: John Mortimer dies aged 85"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506221328/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/wit-flirt-genius-john-mortimer-dies-aged-85-1418233.html |date=6 May 2016}}, ''The Independent'', 17 January 2009</ref><ref name="Times1"/> Craig and Mortimer had met when the actress had been cast playing a pregnant woman in Mortimer's first full-length [[West End theatre|West End]] play, ''The Wrong Side of the Park''. Ross Bentley was raised by Craig and her husband, [[Jack Bentley (musician)|Jack Bentley]], the show business writer and musician.

In Mortimer's memoirs, ''Clinging to the Wreckage'', he wrote of "enjoying my mid-thirties and all the pleasures which come to a young writer."