'Charming, intelligent, cheerful, mellifluous, gossipy and wise. Buy it for Christmas' - Fay Weldon, "Mail on Sunday". John Mortimer recounts an extraordinarily full year in his life, which includes working on films, raising Lottery money for the Royal Court, chairing the committee that will decide on the new Trafalgar Square statue, having lunch with old lags in prison, and harrying New Labour. Public and private, poignant and frank, "The Summer of a Dormouse" is a vivid testimony to the pleasures and pains of old age.