Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend is best known as the creator of the best-selling Adrian Mole series of books, as well as numerous other books, plays, radio and television works. She was born in Leicester in 1946, just around the corner from the house where Joe Orton was brought up. Married with a child by the time she was 19, her first writing success came when she wrote plays for the children at the local adventure playground where she was working to perform. In 1978 she joined a Writer’s Group at the Phoenix Arts Centre, with her first play, Womberang, winning her a Thames Television Bursary as Writer in Residence.

The creation of Adrian Mole came about in 1981; Townsend stating that she’d stolen the copyright off the diarist. In fact, many of the elements of the books, such as character names, came from people she had known, particularly from her time at school. The books themselves captured the public zeitgeist, with the first two alone making her the best-selling author of the 1980’s. A further five books in the series were published, the concluding chapter, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction appearing in 2004. Adrian has also appeared on the radio and TV.

Other books include The Queen and I (1992 – also turned into a play by the author), Number Ten (2002), and Queen Camilla (2006)

Playwriting really was the beginning of her professional career however – after Womberang, her other plays included The Ghost of Daniel Lambert (Leicester Haymarket Theatre) 1981, Dayroom (Croydon Warehouse Theatre) 1981, Captain Christmas and the Evil Adults (Phoenix Arts Theatre) 1982, Bazaar and Rummage (Royal Court Theatre) 1982, Groping For Words (Croydon Warehouse, 1983) The Great Celestial Cow (Royal Court Theatre and tour) 1984, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole – The Play (which transferred to the Wyndham’s Theatre, London in 1984) and Disneyland it Ain't (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs) 1989.

Sue Townsend has suffered from diabetes for many years, leading to her eventually being registered blind in 2001, her last two novels being dictated to her husband. She still lives in Leicester, and has four children and five grandchildren.



Sue Townsend on Groping For Words:

I wrote Groping For Words because I was angry about the high level of illiteracy in this country. I couldn't understand (and still can't) why so many young people were leaving school unable to read or write properly after eleven years of compulsory education. I daydreamed about a world in which everyone was fully literate. What would happen if we all demanded a university education? A career? A skilled job? The conclusion I came to was the failure is built into our education system: our present political and social organisations would be unable to cope with a highly educated and demanding workforce.

I once worked on an adventure playground on a so-called 'problem' housing estate. The level of illiteracy was frighteningly high but the children were very intelligent, quick witted and ashamed of their inability to fill in a simple form or read a story to a younger child.
But there is always hope. A friend of mine, Beryl Lawrence, went to literacy classes for four years. Then, at the age of fifty-one she wrote a short book called Me. At the age of fifty-two she wrote a longer book called Me Again. She is now studying for French GCSE.
(From the Introduction to Sue Townsend Plays:1)