Sue Townsend

Marriage and pre-writing career Townsend left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a variety of jobs including packer for Birds Eye, a petrol station attendant and a receptionist. Working at a petrol station allowed her the chance to read between serving customers.

She married Keith Townsend, a sheet metal worker on 25 April 1964; the couple had three children under five by the time Townsend was 23 (Sean, Daniel, and Victoria). In 1971 the marriage ended and she became a single parent. In this position, Townsend and her children endured considerable hardship. In Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989), a short book in the Counterblasts series, she recounts an experience from when her eldest child was five. Because the Department of Social Security was unable to give her even 50p to tide them over, she was obliged to feed herself and her children on a tin of peas and an Oxo cube as an evening meal. Townsend would collect used Corona bottles, to redeem the 4p return fee by which to feed her children.

Aged thirteen, her son questioned one Sunday why they did not go to animal parks on weekends like other families. She later recounted that it was the start of her writing which became the Adrian Mole books, looking at life through the clinical eyes of a teenager but in a comedic manner. Townsend then chose to research the world of teenagers and started attending youth clubs as a volunteer organiser. This led to her training as a youth worker.

While employed as a supervisor at an adventure playground, she observed a man making canoes nearby and, because he was married, put off talking to him; it was a year before he asked her for a date. Townsend and Broadway married on 13 June 1986.

Transition to a writing career Townsend's new partner encouraged her to join a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester, in 1978, when she was in her early thirties. Initially too shy to speak, she did not write anything for six weeks, but was then given a fortnight to write a play. This became the thirty-minute drama Womberang (1979), set in the waiting room of a gynaecology department. At the Phoenix, she became the writer-in-residence.

At the time of writing the first Adrian Mole book, Townsend was living on the Eyres Monsell Estate, near the house in which playwright Joe Orton was brought up. Mole "came into my head when my eldest son said 'Why don't we go to safari parks like other families do?' That's the only real line of dialogue from my family that's in any of the Mole books. It's in because it triggered it. I remembered that kind of whiny, adolescent self-pity, that 'surely these are not my parents.'"

Success of Adrian Mole The first two published stories appeared in a short-lived arts' journal entitled magazine, in the editing and production of which Townsend was involved, featuring the character then still called Nigel Mole. Actor Nigel Bennett had given her help and encouragement to persist with the work and sent the script to John Tydeman, the deputy head of BBC Radio Drama.

Someone at the publishers Methuen heard the broadcast and commissioned Townsend to write the first book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ which came out in September 1982 The publisher insisted on the change of name because of the similarity to Nigel Molesworth, the schoolboy character created by Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans. The first two books were seen by many as a realistic and humorous treatment of the inner life of an adolescent boy. They also captured something of the zeitgeist of Britain during the Thatcher era.

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984) was reputedly based on her children's experiences at Mary Linwood Comprehensive School in Leicester. Several of the teachers who appear in the book (such as Ms Fossington-Gore and Mr Dock) are based on staff who worked at the school in the early 1980s. When the book was televised, it was mostly filmed at a different school nearby. Mary Linwood Comprehensive was closed in 1997. These first two books were adapted into a television series, broadcast in 1985 and 1987, and a video game.

Later life and career The Queen and I (1992) is a novel whose plot involves the Royal Family rehoused in a council estate after a Republican revolution. Townsend had become a republican while a child. In an interview for The Independent published in September 1992 she related that after finding the idea of God a ridiculous idea, an argument in favour of the British monarchy also collapsed. "I was frightened that people believed in it all, the whole package, and I must be the only one with these feelings. It was a moment of revelation, but at the same time it would have been wicked ever to mention it." In addition, she was "being taught about infinity, which I found mind-boggling. It made me feel we were all tiny, tiny specks: and if I was, then they – the Royal Family – were, too."

On 25 February 2009, Leicester City Council announced that Townsend would be given the Honorary Freedom of Leicester (where she lived). Townsend became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1993. Amongst her honours and awards, she received honorary doctorates from the University of Leicester, from Loughborough University and De Montfort University, Leicester.

In 1991, Townsend appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Her chosen book was Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis and her luxury item was a swimming pool of champagne.

Political beliefs

In 1989, Townsend published Mr Bevan's Dream – Why Britain Needs its Welfare State, one of the series of Counterblast essays written by such authors as Paul Foot, Marina Warner and Fay Weldon which critiqued, either directly or indirectly the social consequences of Thatcherism.

She describes being "mesmerised" when seeing Aneurin Bevan, the prime mover of the British welfare state on television for the first time. The book consists of a series of short anecdotal stories which touch on ways in which the welfare and education systems of the day supported or (mostly) failed ordinary citizens. In "The Quick Birth", Townsend recalls the experience of giving birth to her first child, born prematurely but who survived thanks to the dedicated National Health Service staff at her local hospital in Leicester; "Community Care" deals with the treatment of vulnerable people with mental health issues; "Mr Smith's privatised penis", the final section, is a dystopian satire on a future where pavements, sunlight, fresh air and even sex have been sold off to private enterprise.

"In this pamphlet, I have fallen back on the traditional working-class method for expressing ideas – the anecdote, or what is now called the "oral tradition" (which is only a fancy term for working-class people talking to each other but not bothering to record what they've heard").

Townsend, in a 2009 Guardian interview with Alex Clark, described herself as a "passionate socialist" who had no time for New Labour. "I support the memory and the history of the party and I consider that these lot are interlopers", she told Clark.

Health problems Townsend had ill health for several years. She was a chain smoker, had tuberculosis (TB), peritonitis at 23 and had a heart attack in her 30s. It was a condition with which she struggled, believing herself to be the "world's worst diabetic". The condition led to Townsend's being registered blind in 2001, Surgery was carried out at Leicester General Hospital and Townsend spoke to the BBC about her illness on an appeal for National Kidney Day.

Death Townsend died at her home on 10 April 2014, eight days after her 68th birthday, following a stroke. Stephen Mangan, who portrayed Adrian Mole in the 2001 television adaptation, said that he was "greatly upset to hear that Sue Townsend has died. One of the warmest, funniest and wisest people I ever met".

Awards Year Award1981 Thames Television Playwright Award for Womberang 2003 Frink award 2007 Two honorary doctorates, one from the University of Leicester and one from Loughborough University 2007 James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin 2013 honorary doctorate of letters from De Montfort University, Leicester

Works

Adrian Mole series The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ (1982), her best-selling book, and the best-selling new British fiction book of the 1980s. The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984) The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole (1989) Adrian Mole: From Minor to Major (1991) is an omnibus of the first three, and includes as a bonus the specially written Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians. Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years (1993) Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (1999) Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (2004) The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, 1999–2001 (2008) Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years (2009)

Other novels Rebuilding Coventry (1988) The Queen and I (1992), a story about the British royal family living a "normal" life on an urban housing estate following a republican revolution. Ghost Children (1997), a novel treating the issues of bereavement, child abuse and women's self-esteem in relation to body image. Number Ten (2002) Queen Camilla (2006) The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year (2012)

Plays Womberang (Soho Poly – 1979) The Ghost of Daniel Lambert (Leicester Haymarket Theatre, 1981) Theatre closed in January 2006 Dayroom (Croydon Warehouse Theatre, 1981) Captain Christmas and the Evil Adults (Phoenix Arts Theatre, 1982) now known as the Sue Townsend Theatre Bazaar and Rummage (Royal Court Theatre, 1982) Groping for Words (Croydon Warehouse, 1983) The Great Celestial Cow (Royal Court Theatre and tour, 1984) The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾-The Play (Leicester Phoenix, 1984) now known as Sue Townsend Theatre Ear Nose and Throat (National large-scale tour Good Company Theatre Productions, 1988) Disneyland It Ain't (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 1989) Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes (Library Theatre, Manchester, 1989) The Queen and I (Vaudeville Theatre, 1994; toured Australia in summer 1996 as The Royals Down Under)

Non-fiction Mr Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State (1989) The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman (2001)

Footnotes