Oh dear, Lupin! Son never told father just how wayward he was
Aids and drugs secret of boy in best selling book
HIS depairing letters to his errant son became a surprise bestseller.
But it seems Roger Mortimer didn’t know the half of it.
Charlie Mortimer, who was rebuked in the book Dear Lupin: Letters to a Wayward Son, has revealed that he never told his father that he was gay, used heroin and had been diagnosed with the Aids virus after promiscuity both with men and female African prostitutes.
The Lupin letters, which were published in 2012 to widespread acclaim and mirth, admonished Charlie Mortimer for behaviour including leaving Eton without any A-levels, quitting the Coldstream Guards, and drifting between dead-end jobs.
Roger Mortimer had died in 1991 aged 82 after a career as a soldier. He spent five years as a German prisoner of war after being captured at Dunkirk.
His letters to his son over a 25- year period often returned to the boy’s failings, while detailing humorous incidents involving family, friends and neighbours.
He nicknamed his son Lupin after the hopeless son of the fictional Victorian comic diarist Mr Pooter in The Diary of a Nobody. It was years after his death that Charlie Mortimer decided to seek a publisher, and soon found interest – and rivalry from his sisters, who had their own letters.
Now Mortimer, 63, is revealing the full truth about his life in a book, Lucky Lupin, to be published next week.
He said he did not want to tell his father all his problems. ‘He was towards the end of his life, and I did not want to upset him any more,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘Having said that, he was very humane and quite liberal.’ Mortimer said he had struggled to accept his homosexuality until he was 30, and would never know where he had become HIV positive. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘After all, I went with female prostitutes in Africa, had lots of gay sex and was taking heroin in my twenties, so it could have come from a shared needle. In 1985 I had taken an Aids test under a pseudonym. You have to remember the fear and paranoia about Aids then. Anyone infected was considered a social pariah.’
He went on: ‘I’d decided from day one to be open about my diagnosis, apart from to my parents, whom I felt had suffered enough from my antics.
‘Aids seemed such a sleazy and dishonourable thing to have. My dad had been a real war hero ... whereas I found myself confronting a terminal disease that I’d acquired either from jacking up drugs or having too much sex.’
Mortimer said he had admitted his sexuality and health problems to his mother Cynthia, an extrovert alcoholic.
He said that for a long time he took no medicine to combat the disease but now uses retro-viral drugs, and has outlived most of those diagnosed in the 1980s. His book is dedicated to his civil partner Tim Partington, and to the NHS for being his twin ‘lifesupport systems’.
The book of Roger Mortimer’s letters, Dear Lupin, has sold more than 100,000 copies.
‘Suffered enough from my antics’