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| Sue Townsend – 'a lone voice, a humanist and a genius' | Sue Townsend – 'a lone voice, a humanist and a genius' |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| Ian Rankin | Ian Rankin |
| I was in my early 20s and a student when the first Adrian Mole book was published. I came from a working class background and was the first member of my family to attend university. I'd been a quiet teenager, hiding in my bedroom, reading everything from Ken Kesey to Solzhenitsyn (without ever really understanding the latter) and writing poems and song lyrics, mostly about love and death, which I showed to no one. My parents had left school at 15 and only read books during our annual holiday to a caravan site in St Andrews. Now here I was studying Eng Lit, much to their bemusement, and trying desperately to become an intellectual – and a published writer. | I was in my early 20s and a student when the first Adrian Mole book was published. I came from a working class background and was the first member of my family to attend university. I'd been a quiet teenager, hiding in my bedroom, reading everything from Ken Kesey to Solzhenitsyn (without ever really understanding the latter) and writing poems and song lyrics, mostly about love and death, which I showed to no one. My parents had left school at 15 and only read books during our annual holiday to a caravan site in St Andrews. Now here I was studying Eng Lit, much to their bemusement, and trying desperately to become an intellectual – and a published writer. |
| So Adrian Mole filled me with a certain horror as well as providing much laughter. I saw so much of myself in him. But Sue Townsend provided more – there was social commentary: how the breakup of a marriage affects all concerned; the way society deals with an OAP like Adrian's eventual friend Bert. Then there's first love, friendship, and a wealth of other beautiful observations. All of it cleverly contained in diary form. Yes, dear reader, I too kept a diary, and did so since the age of 12. Would I share it with the world? Would I hell. But I'm glad Adrian did. | So Adrian Mole filled me with a certain horror as well as providing much laughter. I saw so much of myself in him. But Sue Townsend provided more – there was social commentary: how the breakup of a marriage affects all concerned; the way society deals with an OAP like Adrian's eventual friend Bert. Then there's first love, friendship, and a wealth of other beautiful observations. All of it cleverly contained in diary form. Yes, dear reader, I too kept a diary, and did so since the age of 12. Would I share it with the world? Would I hell. But I'm glad Adrian did. |
| Michael Rosen | Michael Rosen |
| The Adrian Mole Diaries was a radio highlight. The interplay between what we knew was the knowing awareness of the real writer and the not-so knowing voice of the "writer" was great comedy. But she had to do more than that: she had to capture a nerdiness to make it believable. Radio often looks for a "keyhole" through which we get a glimpse of the contradictions and tensions in everyday life. Sue did exactly this. Pure pleasure. | The Adrian Mole Diaries was a radio highlight. The interplay between what we knew was the knowing awareness of the real writer and the not-so knowing voice of the "writer" was great comedy. But she had to do more than that: she had to capture a nerdiness to make it believable. Radio often looks for a "keyhole" through which we get a glimpse of the contradictions and tensions in everyday life. Sue did exactly this. Pure pleasure. |
| Jonathan Coe | Jonathan Coe |
| She was such an inspiring figure, in personal and more general ways. There are different kinds of literary success, some to do with sales, some to do with winning prizes, but she had the greatest and rarest kind: she created a character whose name has entered the national consciousness, a name which is familiar and meaningful even to those (many, many) people who hardly ever read books. I loved the rueful, melancholy comedy of Adrian Mole as soon as I encountered him: his nerdy aestheticism was a profound influence on my teenage alter ego in The Rotters' Club, Benjamin Trotter, whose unrequited passion for Cicely Boyd mirrors Adrian's equally hopeless infatuation with Pandora. From Sue Townsend, I learned (or tried to learn) a lot about how to intertwine personal and national histories, how to attempt comedy on the macro scale as well as the micro – because the Adrian Mole books capture, among other things, thirty years of recent British history seen through a gloriously ironic lens. It's a serious achievement to leave behind, and one which has hugely enriched the tradition of British comic writing. | She was such an inspiring figure, in personal and more general ways. There are different kinds of literary success, some to do with sales, some to do with winning prizes, but she had the greatest and rarest kind: she created a character whose name has entered the national consciousness, a name which is familiar and meaningful even to those (many, many) people who hardly ever read books. I loved the rueful, melancholy comedy of Adrian Mole as soon as I encountered him: his nerdy aestheticism was a profound influence on my teenage alter ego in The Rotters' Club, Benjamin Trotter, whose unrequited passion for Cicely Boyd mirrors Adrian's equally hopeless infatuation with Pandora. From Sue Townsend, I learned (or tried to learn) a lot about how to intertwine personal and national histories, how to attempt comedy on the macro scale as well as the micro – because the Adrian Mole books capture, among other things, thirty years of recent British history seen through a gloriously ironic lens. It's a serious achievement to leave behind, and one which has hugely enriched the tradition of British comic writing. |
| Alexis Petridis | Alexis Petridis |
| Of all the books about teenage angst that I read as a kid, it wasn't that I didn't identify in some way with Holden Caulfield or Ponyboy Curtis in The Outsiders, it was just that Adrian Mole seemed most like me. He was suburban and he was hopeless: not in the romantic, doomed, Rebel Without a Cause sense, but in the unable-to-get-anything-quite-right sense. Like SE Hinton's anti-hero, he joined a gang, but they didn't "rumble" with rival gangs, or stab anybody, or hide out in a church with a loaded gun reciting Robert Frost poems: they just aimlessly hung around outside a chip shop. Holden Caulfield hired a prostitute, Adrian Mole "indulged in a bit of light petting" with Pandora before she went home with a headache: "I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed." | Of all the books about teenage angst that I read as a kid, it wasn't that I didn't identify in some way with Holden Caulfield or Ponyboy Curtis in The Outsiders, it was just that Adrian Mole seemed most like me. He was suburban and he was hopeless: not in the romantic, doomed, Rebel Without a Cause sense, but in the unable-to-get-anything-quite-right sense. Like SE Hinton's anti-hero, he joined a gang, but they didn't "rumble" with rival gangs, or stab anybody, or hide out in a church with a loaded gun reciting Robert Frost poems: they just aimlessly hung around outside a chip shop. Holden Caulfield hired a prostitute, Adrian Mole "indulged in a bit of light petting" with Pandora before she went home with a headache: "I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed." |
| I haven't picked up The Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders in years, but I kept re-reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and its sequel. They were always funny, but the books seemed to change as I got older. For one thing, I got more of the jokes – many of which had sailed over my 12-year-old head, in much the same way as his mother's behaviour with Mr Lucas passes Adrian by. | I haven't picked up The Catcher in the Rye or The Outsiders in years, but I kept re-reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and its sequel. They were always funny, but the books seemed to change as I got older. For one thing, I got more of the jokes – many of which had sailed over my 12-year-old head, in much the same way as his mother's behaviour with Mr Lucas passes Adrian by. |
| For another, I found my interest shifting from Adrian to his parents, in particular Pauline Mole, who's every bit as perfectly drawn as the books' protagonist, and gets their best line to boot, when Adrian, racked with sexuality once more by the arrival of Selina Scott on Britain's televisions, attempts to recount a dream he's had about the Breakfast Time presenter. "There's only one thing more deadly boring than listening to other people's dreams," she interrupts, "and that is listening to other people's problems." As her son would have put it: HA! HA! HA! | For another, I found my interest shifting from Adrian to his parents, in particular Pauline Mole, who's every bit as perfectly drawn as the books' protagonist, and gets their best line to boot, when Adrian, racked with sexuality once more by the arrival of Selina Scott on Britain's televisions, attempts to recount a dream he's had about the Breakfast Time presenter. "There's only one thing more deadly boring than listening to other people's dreams," she interrupts, "and that is listening to other people's problems." As her son would have put it: HA! HA! HA! |
| Bob and Roberta Smith | Bob and Roberta Smith |
| Sue Townsend's approach to politics has had a powerful influence on me. I have never understood the Royal Family. Sue Townsend's wonderful political imagination led her to write a political fantasy where the Queen is invited to move to a council estate after the creation of the British republic. It's a gentle approach, but no less powerful for that. Her humour allows you to rise above the politicians and the divisiveness. No one ever got hurt or beaten up because of a Sue Townsend novel, but their conscience was raised nonetheless. In August I will release a film, Art Party, in which a character called Michael Grove has an epiphany when he suddenly gets Art. Art Party's politics of humour is inspired by Sue Townsend. A lone voice, a humanist and a genius. | Sue Townsend's approach to politics has had a powerful influence on me. I have never understood the Royal Family. Sue Townsend's wonderful political imagination led her to write a political fantasy where the Queen is invited to move to a council estate after the creation of the British republic. It's a gentle approach, but no less powerful for that. Her humour allows you to rise above the politicians and the divisiveness. No one ever got hurt or beaten up because of a Sue Townsend novel, but their conscience was raised nonetheless. In August I will release a film, Art Party, in which a character called Michael Grove has an epiphany when he suddenly gets Art. Art Party's politics of humour is inspired by Sue Townsend. A lone voice, a humanist and a genius. |
| Susan Calman | Susan Calman |
| It's no exaggeration to say that The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole changed my life, which is odd, as it's about a teenage boy and I certainly wasn't one of them. But for many reasons the book was the first book I felt was my own. I hadn't been told to read it by my teachers – I stole my brother's copy and it was my secret, funny window into a new world. As I write this I'm looking at my original (well my brother's) copy of the book, well thumbed and much loved, which I return to from time to time to remind me of how funny and touching an idea it was. It made me laugh as much when I was 13 and it does now at the age of 39. And that's the genius of it. I constantly find new bits of it to love. | |
| With its references to the Falklands conflict and having a building society savings book, the Secret Diary is a time capsule of memories from the early 80s. | With its references to the Falklands conflict and having a building society savings book, the Secret Diary is a time capsule of memories from the early 80s. |
| Victoria Wood made me want to be a stand-up; Sue Townsend made me want to be a writer. And, in my life, if I write anything that people remember for a fraction of the time that they remember Adrian Mole, I'll be delighted. | Victoria Wood made me want to be a stand-up; Sue Townsend made me want to be a writer. And, in my life, if I write anything that people remember for a fraction of the time that they remember Adrian Mole, I'll be delighted. |
| In short, her work is perfection, and she was magnificent. I'm off to read the Secret Diary again, a constant companion for the past 30 years and, without doubt, the next 30. | In short, her work is perfection, and she was magnificent. I'm off to read the Secret Diary again, a constant companion for the past 30 years and, without doubt, the next 30. |
| Love, Susan Calman, aged 391/2 | |
| Frank Cottrell Boyce | Frank Cottrell Boyce |
| Thoreau said most men live lives of quiet desperation. Over the course of the Adrian novels, Townsend described what that felt like and made it funny – even found a poetry in it. A lot of modern comedy is based on cruelty and snobbery, but she found decency and even heroism in Adrian's delusions of genius, his pointless adoration of Pandora, and his loyalty to Bert Baxter. In an age when people were profligate with money and economical with truth, his failure was a badge of integrity. | Thoreau said most men live lives of quiet desperation. Over the course of the Adrian novels, Townsend described what that felt like and made it funny – even found a poetry in it. A lot of modern comedy is based on cruelty and snobbery, but she found decency and even heroism in Adrian's delusions of genius, his pointless adoration of Pandora, and his loyalty to Bert Baxter. In an age when people were profligate with money and economical with truth, his failure was a badge of integrity. |
| Robin Ince | Robin Ince |
| Two books have made me snort milk out of my nose through apoplectic laughter, both are diaries of deluded, fictional males, and both still provide me with delight when I return to them decades on: The Diary of a Nobody and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 133/4. I no longer drink milk when reading, for health reasons. | Two books have made me snort milk out of my nose through apoplectic laughter, both are diaries of deluded, fictional males, and both still provide me with delight when I return to them decades on: The Diary of a Nobody and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 133/4. I no longer drink milk when reading, for health reasons. |
| I was fortunate that my puberty began when the first Adrian Mole was published and The Smiths formed. Here were two great self-regarding narrators who would help me through those difficult years of penile panic, acne eruptions and romantic notions that were untroubled by real possibilities. | I was fortunate that my puberty began when the first Adrian Mole was published and The Smiths formed. Here were two great self-regarding narrators who would help me through those difficult years of penile panic, acne eruptions and romantic notions that were untroubled by real possibilities. |
| Sue Townsend invaded the minds of teenage boys and revealed the terrors and desires that lay within with startling accuracy. At the time, inthe midst of my own onslaught of hormonal confusion, I was too busy laughing to see the mirror in front of me. | Sue Townsend invaded the minds of teenage boys and revealed the terrors and desires that lay within with startling accuracy. At the time, inthe midst of my own onslaught of hormonal confusion, I was too busy laughing to see the mirror in front of me. |
| Sue Townsend carried off the trick of writing as a deluded lad who would never have the ability to be a writer, and did so with such wit and yet believability in his frequent witlessness. The teenager is frequently spoofed, but it takes great empathy to make such an antihero so lovable and real. | Sue Townsend carried off the trick of writing as a deluded lad who would never have the ability to be a writer, and did so with such wit and yet believability in his frequent witlessness. The teenager is frequently spoofed, but it takes great empathy to make such an antihero so lovable and real. |
| "I saw Malcolm Muggeridge on the television last night, and I understood nearly every word. It all adds up. A bad home, poor diet, not liking punk. I think I will join the library and see what happens." And so, Adrian declares himself an intellectual. | "I saw Malcolm Muggeridge on the television last night, and I understood nearly every word. It all adds up. A bad home, poor diet, not liking punk. I think I will join the library and see what happens." And so, Adrian declares himself an intellectual. |
| We may all like to have imagined that we were Holden Caulfield, but really we were Adrian Mole. I hope no one else tries to revive Adrian. You might be able to hand Sherlock Holmes or James Bond to other authors, but Mole has more humanity than them, and it is a tribute to the humane vision of Sue Townsend that she could create such a character. | We may all like to have imagined that we were Holden Caulfield, but really we were Adrian Mole. I hope no one else tries to revive Adrian. You might be able to hand Sherlock Holmes or James Bond to other authors, but Mole has more humanity than them, and it is a tribute to the humane vision of Sue Townsend that she could create such a character. |
| Luke Wright | Luke Wright |
| The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was published in 1982, the year I was born. I discovered it 10 years later and it changed my life. It brought satire into my life, but it also became a how-(not-)to guide to being a teenager. I learned about girlfriends, pornography, wet dreams and painting your room black from Adrian. It didn't prevent me from writing excruciating poetry or worrying about my penis size, but it made my growing pains slightly less painful. | The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was published in 1982, the year I was born. I discovered it 10 years later and it changed my life. It brought satire into my life, but it also became a how-(not-)to guide to being a teenager. I learned about girlfriends, pornography, wet dreams and painting your room black from Adrian. It didn't prevent me from writing excruciating poetry or worrying about my penis size, but it made my growing pains slightly less painful. |
| Townsend introduced me to the things she was satirising for the first time. She took me out of my sheltered North Essex life and gave me a social and political education. Through Sue Townsend I learned about Thatcher, the Morning Star, The Second Sex, Evelyn Waugh (and her daughter Auberon), the BBC drama department, and how Sir Edmund Hillary had not worn black socks when he scaled Everest. There's no doubt she contributed to my journey from a traditional, right-of-centre background to becoming a socialist and republican. | |
| While her satire was sharp and scabrous, she treated her characters with a warmth that made them stay with us over the years. Notable in this respect were her portrayals of Margaret Hilda Roberts and the royal family in their council house. Quotes from her books frequently pop into my head. Each spring I think about the council cutting down all the elm trees on Elm Tree Avenue. | |
| I'm surely one of many writers who count this warm, satirical style as part of their artistic DNA. We are thankful to have her writing in our lives. | I'm surely one of many writers who count this warm, satirical style as part of their artistic DNA. We are thankful to have her writing in our lives. |
| Isy Suttie | Isy Suttie |
| The Secret Diary was the first book that made me properly laugh. I read the first secret diary when I was very young and thought it was a real diary that happened to be hilarious until my cousin explained to me it was written by Sue Townsend. So funny, without ever being cruel or mocking. | The Secret Diary was the first book that made me properly laugh. I read the first secret diary when I was very young and thought it was a real diary that happened to be hilarious until my cousin explained to me it was written by Sue Townsend. So funny, without ever being cruel or mocking. |