Sue Townsend Biography

British novelist and playwright, born in Leicester. She is the author of Three Plays (1984), consisting of Bazaar and Rummage, Gasping for Words, and Womberang. She achieved her greatest success with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ (1982), which examines British society in the 1980s through the eyes of its precocious teenaged narrator, whose voice Townsend captures with authenticity and humour. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole followed in 1984. Adrian Mole has appeared as the hero of a stage play and a successful television serial, both scripted by the author. She has since written, in similarly satirical vein, the novels Rebuilding Coventry (1988), which tells the story of a woman who escapes from a small town to London's ‘cardboard city’ of the homeless after murdering a man, and The Queen and I (1992). She is also the author of the non-fiction work Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989).