Sue Townsend
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Sue Townsend (born April 2, 1946) is the author of the Adrian Mole series of books. She has suffered from diabetes for many years as a result of which she was registered blind in 2001.
- The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ - her best selling book, and the best-selling new British fiction book of the 1980s.
- The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
- The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole
- Adrian Mole From Minor to Major is an omnibus of the first 3 Adrian Mole Books, and includes Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians.
- Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years
- Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years
- The Queen and I - a story about the British royal family living a normal life on an urban housing estate
- Rebuilding Coventry
- Number Ten
- Ghost Children
- Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was reputedly based on her son's experiences at Mary Linwood Comprehensive school in Leicester. Several of the teachers who appear in the book (such as Mr. Dock and Miss Fossington-Gore) are based on actual staff who worked at the school in the early 1980s. When the book was televised, it was mostly filmed at a different school nearby. Mary Linwood Comprehensive was closed in 1997.
Sue went to Glen Hills Primary school where the school secretary was named 'Mrs Claricotes' -as is the school secretary in the books. She then went to South Wigston High School.
At the time of writing the first Mole book, Sue Townsend was living on the Saffron Lane Estate, a stone's-throw away from the house in which Joe Orton was brought up.
The first two books in the series appealed to many readers as a realistic and humorous treatment of the inner life of an adolescent boy. They also captured something of the zeitgeist of Britain during the Thatcher period.
See also the List of people with visual disabilitiesTemplate:UK-writer-stub