THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION FEATURING A BRAND-NEW INTRODUCTION FROM CAITLIN MORAN

''My comfort read. The best diaries ever written'' ADAM KAY, GUARDIAN
''Every child in the country should receive a copy on their thirteenth birthday'' CAITLIN MORAN
''One of literature''s most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us'' OBSERVER

**In 2022 Sue Townsend was awarded the Legacy Achievement Award by the Comedy Women in Print prize**

AS SEEN IN THE TIMES
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Friday January 2nd

I felt rotten today. It''s my mother''s fault for singing ''My Way'' at two o''clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children''s home.

Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life as he writes candidly about the dog, his parents'' marital troubles and life as a tortured poet and ''misunderstood intellectual.''

Forty years after it first appeared, Sue Townsend''s comic masterpiece continues to be rediscovered by new generations of readers.
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''The UK''s bestselling fiction book of the eighties and one of the great comic creations of the past half-century. Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year'' John Self, The Times

''Reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole when I was 14 felt quite like an awakening'' GREG DAVIES, Sunday Times

''Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see'' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

''One of Britain''s most celebrated comic writers'' GUARDIAN