Books: A New Heaven and a New Earth Paradise Postponed

He has called himself "the best playwright ever to have defended a murderer at the Central Criminal Court." The claim is neither entirely immodest nor self-deprecating. It is English Author John Mortimer's way of pointing out that the careers he has pursued seldom overlap. A barrister who became a Queen's Counsel and practiced in the loftiest reaches of the British legal system, he might also be described as the best lawyer ever to write for the stage (A Voyage Round My Father), screen (John and Mary) and television (Brideshead Revisited, Rumpole of the Bailey). Now Mortimer, 62, has earned another encomium: he is the only adapter of Evelyn Waugh ever to have produced a long novel about the past 40 years of life in England.

Paradise Postponed combines some of the social sweep of Brideshead with the hugger-mugger of Rumpole, the overweight, conniving and lovable Old Bailey barrister. The novel's central mystery emerges after the death, in 1985, of Simeon Simcox, 80, Anglican rector of Rapstone Fanner, a village some two hours' driving time west of London. The clergyman's will contains a staggering surprise. He has left nothing to his wife Dorothy or his two grown sons Henry and Fred. Instead, the ardent Socialist once known as "the Red Rector of Rapstone" has bequeathed all of his shares in the family-owned brewery, which may be worth (pounds)2 million, to one Leslie Titmuss, a local lad who - has clawed his way into national prominence as a Conservative M.P. and a Cabinet Minister. Dorothy and Fred are inclined to let the inexplicable matter drop. But Henry, the elder son and a well-known writer, is infuriated and promises a campaign aimed at "defeating the abominable Titmuss." That entails proving in court that his father was insane.

With this problem firmly established, Mortimer backs and fills over the four decades of complications that preceded it. The fortunes of the Simcox family form one important skein. The successful end of World War II and the subsequent victory of Clement Attlee and the Labor Party inspire Simeon in his pulpit. He draws his sermons from Revelation 21: 1: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and earth had passed away." Firmly committed to social justice at home and abroad, the minister writes impassioned letters about the New Jerusalem to his bishop, signs manifestos, marches and frets when he observes any of his parishioners in the old- fashioned act of solitary prayer.

Busy with the chores of saving the world, he becomes a benign but remote member of his own household: "Not for the first time he felt the simplicity of the great issues, he knew exactly what should be done about South Africa and urban poverty and the bomb. It was the small events, those nearer home, that seemed to him forever shrouded in mystery."

Among these small events are the fates of his sons. Henry's first novel creates a minor ruckus and earns him a name as one of England's angry young men. He marries his younger brother's sweetheart, Agnes Salter, writes screenplays, divorces, weds an adoring younger woman and becomes a cranky old reactionary. For his part, Fred woos and loses Agnes but decides to follow her father's practice as the village doctor. His new mentor espouses a mission that frees Fred from messianic impulses: "I don't deal in right and wrong. I deal in collywobbles and housemaid's knee."