Read by Paul Shelley

1. Paradise Postponed [1985], 12 hours 47 mins.
The Reverend Simeon Simcox, Rector of Rapstone Fanner, after a long life as Civil
Rights campaigner and parish priest, dies quietly in his Rectory. Gathered at his
funeral are his younger son, Fred, a doctor and part-time jazz drummer; his more
volatile elder son, Henry, an angry young man turned crusty old blimb; their
childhood friend Agnes and the devoted Lonnie; Simeon's wife, Dorothy; and the
loyal villagers and gentry of Rapstone and surrounding parishes. These parishes
have not been at ease with each other since the Civil War divided their inhabitants
into Roundheads and Cavaliers. In 1984 old animosities survive: Hoooray Henries,
new working-class Tories like the Rt Hon. Leslie Titmuss, M.P., rich Socialist
idealists like Simeon Simcox and his family struggle on the battleground of a new
and more brutal England.A shock is delivered at an early stage in the shape of
Simeon's will. In Henry's ambition to unravel the mystery and Fred's equal
determination not to uncover it, we are treated to a large cast of gloriously
comic characters. In their different ways they tell us how the New Jerusalem we
were promised after the Second World War looked very much like the mixture as
before. [R.A.Hylton]

2. Titmuss Regained [1990], 8 hours 31 mins.
The Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss has clawed his way up the Tory government
ranks and is now Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Ecological Affairs
and Planning (H.E.A.P.), and in pursuit of beautiful widow Jenny Sidonia.
But seismic changes are afoot in the beautiful countryside where a new town
threatens to engulf his own back garden. Will Leslie bow to market forces?
Or will he join the fight against the multi-storey car parks, shopping precincts
and office blocks that could sweep away Rapstone Valley? The sequel to John
Mortimer's stunning novel Paradise Postponed, "Titmuss Regained" is a panoramic
satire on the machinations of politics and an affectionate elegy to a disappearing
world.

3. The Sound of Trumpets [1998], 8 hours 23 mins.
In Paradise Postponed and Titmuss Regained John Mortimer took some fairly hefty
swipes at the Thatcherite Conservative governments and the way the Labour Party
had let them get away with it. The fact that Labour is the government at this
writing appears to have changed nothing and the final part of this post-war
political trilogy launches a pretty good swipe at them as well. New Labour - or
"conservatism with water" as the trilogy's most enduring character, Leslie Titmuss,
calls them--are seen, like the appearance of identical high streets in every town,
as just another example of the blanding of Britain. So enter Titmuss--now retired
from the Thatcher cabinet and called Lord Titmuss, First Baron Skurfield--to shake
things up. He plays a wonderful Mephistopheles to a proto-Blairite parliamentary
candidate's Faust as the electors in the tranquil Rapstone Valley again become
a microcosm of British public life. Champagne socialists seem to come out of it
all rather well, (as, it must be said, do reactionary old brutes like Titmuss)
and the real venom is again reserved for the insipid political clones and power
junkies. All in all this is vintage Mortimer. [Nick Wroe]

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