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Sue Townsend

Sue Townsend is the creator of Britain's best loved and bestselling diarist, Adrian Mole. She was born in Leicester in 1946, is married and has four children and five grandchildren and still lives in Leicester. She left school at fifteen and was employed in series of unskilled jobs. By her 18th birthday she was married, and a year later had her first baby. She began working with children in an adventure playground on the estate where playwright Joe Orton grew up. While taking a canoeing course for playleaders, she met Colin Broadway and they now have a 21-year-old daughter. In 1978 she joined a Writers Group at the Phoenix Art Centre in Leicester and her career as an author and playwright took off from there. Her first play, Womberang, won its author a Thames Television Bursary as Writer in Residence.

Books:

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2 and its sequel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole were both number one bestsellers and made Sue Townsend the bestselling novelist of the 1980s. In 1991 came a third volume: Adrian Mole from Minor to Major, in 1993 Adrian Mole - The Wilderness Years and in 1999 Adrian Mole: the Cappuccino Years. Together the Mole diaries have sold over 8 million copies, have been adapted for radio, television, theatre and been translated into 34 languages. Her other novels include Rebuilding Coventry (1988), The Queen and I (1992) and Ghost Children (1998). A collection of her monthly columns for Sainsbury's Magazine was published in 2001 entitled Public Confessions of a Middle-aged Woman Aged 55 3/4.

Plays:

Womberang was produced at the Soho Poly in 1979 and since then Sue has written several stage plays: 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, The Great Celestial Cow (Royal Court Theatre and tour) 1984, Disneyland it Ain't (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs) 1989, In 1994 Sue adapted her novel The Queen and I for the stage, which was performed by the Out of Joint Theatre Co directed by Max Stafford Clark at the Vaudeville Theatre in London. The play toured Australia in the summer of 1996 and was entitled The Royals Down Under.

Radio:

In January 1982 Radio 4 producer John Tydeman serialised the first of Mole's diaries. Sue has had other work produced for radio: The Ashes - a cricketing comedy for Radio 3 (1992), A Ladder in the Stocking - for Radio 4 (1991), The Queen and I was also serialised on Radio 4, as was Adrian Mole - The Wilderness Years in 1993. Adrian Mole - The Cappuccino Years has also been serialised for the morning slot on Radio 4 and produced once more by John Tydeman.

Film and Television:

Sue wrote the screenplays for the television adaptations of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Thames TV, 1985) and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (Thames TV, 1987). She also wrote The Refuge (Channel 4, 1987) and a screenplay called Adios - set in Barcelona.