Avid Mole Fan (Aged 32 and 3/4).


I was very sad to hear of the death of Sue Townsend.

I loved her books as a kid. For me, Adrian Mole was more fact than fiction. We had all the same neuroses – and while I never fell for an aspiring politician called Pandora, I definitely empathised with Adrian's bad luck with the opposite sex.

(I didn't measure my extremities as often as he did though; I promise.)

It’s amazing that a middle-aged woman could capture the voice of a teenage boy so perfectly. Perhaps she was some kind of witch. Whatever her secret, Townsend managed to make Adrian both likeable and irritating in equal measure; with a story that was as tragic as it was comic.

I felt as if I'd grown up alongside him. He was the friend that I'd never met. Yet I somehow had unrestricted access to his diary; weird, that.

It’s strange to think that the force behind such a big part of my childhood has gone. At least we still have her wonderful books. I hope it will be some comfort to her family to know that children and adults will continue to pore over her work for as long as books are read. Forever, I hope.

She also put Ashby-de-la-Zouch on the map. That's not to be sniffed at.

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