Sir John Mortimer, the barrister-cum-writer who created the Old Bailey's most famous fictional defender, has died at the age of 85 after a lengthy illness.

Tony Lacey, Sir John's publisher at Penguin, said the writer passed away at 6.30 this morning at his home in Turville Heath, in the Chilterns near Henley-on-Thames, where he had lived on and off since childhood. With him was his second wife, Penny, and his two younger daughters, Emily and Rosie.

"It’s hard to think he’s gone," Mr Lacey wrote in a tribute. "At least we’re lucky enough to have Rumpole to remind us just how remarkable he was."

Mortimer was born in Hampstead, the only son of Clifford Mortimer, a leading divorce barrister, leading him to quip that he was "raised entirely on the proceeds of adultery".

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Mortimer’s sanguinity of spirit, wit and storytelling have helped shape ideas about the law

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He was educated at Harrow and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he was known for his flamboyance and "bohemian tendencies". He spent a stint working in a wartime propaganda unit, which provided the inspiration for his debut novel, Charade, published in 1947.

Apprenticed to his father's chambers, he was called to the bar the following year and as his legal career got going so did his writing. Mortimer would arriving in chambers at 4am to dash off magazine romances, scripts and even the occasional novel.

Initially the writing was seen as a sideline to finance life after his first marriage in 1949 to the novelist Penelope Fletcher, who became known as Penelope Mortimer. She already had four children by the time they were married and the couple had a further two, so money was tight.

He made his radio debut in 1955 with an adaptation of a novel, Like Men Betrayed, and started to win renown as a playwright. The play A Voyage Round My Father, an autobiographical piece recounting the relationship of a young barrister with his blind and ageing father, helped cement that reputation.

At the same time, Mortimer was becoming known as a liberal defender of free speech. He was defence counsel at the Oz conspiracy trial in 1971 and defended the Sex Pistols in a 1977 obscenity trial over the title of the band's defining album Never Mind The Bollocks.

But it was for a character he created for BBC's Play for Today in 1975 that Mortimer will be remembered. "Rumpole of the Bailey" introduced Horace Rumpole, a curmudgeonly criminal lawyer with a taste for cheap claret and equally cheap cigars.

Rumpole returned as a television series three years later, played by the inimitable Leo McKern, and also featured in a series of books, which Mortimer continued to produce even after McKern's death in 2002.

Mortimer's public image was of a "champagne socialist" and he never hid his love of the bubbly. He was ridiculed in 1986 when with the playwright Harold Pinter he created the 20th June Group, a continental-style grouping of artists dedicated to the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher.

After Labour's victory in 1997, he was rewarded with a knighthood, although he went on to become one of Tony Blair's most persistent critics on the Left, accusing him of riding roughshod over personal freedoms.

Among those paying tribute to Sir John today was Michael Mansfield, a fellow QC known as Britain's most successful socialist lawyer, who told The Times that he would remember John Mortimer the lawyer, rather than the writer.

"I always found him an endearing, generous and, most importantly, courageous man at a time, 30 or four years ago, when being a liberal was tantamount to being a threat to national security," he said. "Throughout that time he has been a constant voice of sanity, defending basic values, in particular the principles of the rule of law and jury trials."

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