Wednesday June 10th

Pandora and I are in love! It is official! She told Claire Nelson, who told Nigel, who told me. I told Nigel to tell Claire to tell Pandora that I return her love. I am over the moon with joy. I can overlook the fact that Pandora smokes five Benson and Hedges a day and has her own lighter. When you are in love such things cease to matter.

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 is an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into the troubled life of an adolescent. Writing candidly about his parents’ marital troubles, the dog, his life as a tortured poet and ‘misunderstood intellectual’, teenager Adrian Mole’s painfully honest diary makes hilarious and compelling reading.

‘I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading’ 
Tom Sharpe

‘Marvellous, touching and screamingly funny … set to become as much a cult book as The Catcher in the Rye’ 
Jilly Cooper

‘Townsend’s wit is razor-sharp’ 
Mirror