Sue Townsend
(1946)
"I have a problem. I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever."
- Adrian Albert Mole
Sue Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946. She attended Glen Hills school in
the early 50s and then went to South Wigston Secondary Modern for Girls. But she
left school when she was 15 and changed jobs several times (so she worked as a
shop assistant, garage attendant and in a factory). She got married when she was
18 and had three children. But her husband left her so she brought them up alone.
Her writing career started when she was 35 - she won the Thames Playwrights´ Award. Her most famous and best known book is "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole" (1985) - a diary kept by a 13 years old boy - sort of intellectual. The book was so successful that it was followed by a number of sequels such as "The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole" or "The True Confessions of Adrian Mole".
She has been famous for other books as well - "The Queen and I" (1991 - they even made a play according to it), "Rebuilding Conventry" (1988) and "Ghost Children" (1998).
Sue Townsend later got married again. In 1999 doctors found out she had diabetes and she slowly began losing her sight. Today she is almost blind.
The Works:
The Adrian Mole Diaries
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
Adrian Mole, From Minor to Major
Adrian Mole, The Wilderness Years
Adrian Mole, The Lost Years
Adrian Mole, The Cappuccino Years
Plays
Womberang
Dayroom
The Ghost of Daniel Lambert
Bazaar and Rummage
Groping for Words
The Great Celestial Cow
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole: The Play
Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes
Captain Christmas and the Evil Adults
Are You Sitting Comfortably?
Others
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Songbook (with Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley)
Mr Bevan's Dream (Essay)
The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Margaret Hilda Roberts and Susan Lilian Townsend
Rebuilding Coventry
The Queen and I
Ghost Children
