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Adrian Mole: The Collected Poems
Adrian Mole: The Collected Poems
Jan 15, 2026 12:50 AM

Author:Sue Townsend

Adrian Mole: The Collected Poems

'It's really, really, really funny' David Walliams

Mole Press - a brand new imprint of Penguin Books - is proud to announce the first publication of The Collected Poems of Adrian Mole to mark the author's 50TH birthday.

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'Edgy politics, tortured eroticism, misunderstood intellect, changing Britain - a whiff of the sublime. Mole's contribution is significant' Daily Telegraph

Featuring poems scattered over nearly thirty years of writing and salvaged from the diaries 'authored' by one Sue Townsend, this slim volume features more than thirty pieces of Adrian's unique art.

From his timeless first documented poem - The Tap - via classic odes to his muse, first and only true love Pandora (I adore ya), we follow Adrian's life in verse form. We not only witness his burgeoning political anger in works like Mrs Thatcher (Do you weep, Mrs Thatcher, do you weep?) but also see in later poems his merciless examination of the hollow shell of masculinity as well as documenting his declining libido in tragic pieces like To My Organ.

For the first time in a single volume, these are the collected poems of misunderstood intellectual and tortured poet Adrian Mole.

'I ruthlessly exploited Adrian. But he can't afford to sue me' Sue Townsend

'Wonderfully funny and sharp as knives' Sunday Times

'One of the great comic creations' Daily Mirror

'The funniest person in the world' Caitlin Moran

Reviews

Mole Press - a brand new imprint of Penguin Books - is proud to announce the first publication of The Collected Poems of Adrian Mole to mark the author's 50TH birthday.

—— from the publisher's description

Edgy politics, tortured eroticism, misunderstood intellect, changing Britain - a whiff of the sublime. Mole's contribution is significant

—— Daily Telegraph

People will want to read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole forever. The reason is simple: it's really, really, really funny

—— David Walliams

The funniest person in the world

—— Caitlin Moran

One of the great comic creations

—— Daily Mirror

The publishers could offer a money back guarantee if you don't laugh and be sure they wouldn't have to write a single check

—— Jeremy Paxman

Adrian Mole is one of literature's great underachievers; his tragedy is that he knows it and the sadness of this undercuts the humour and makes us laugh not until, but while, it hurts

—— Daily Mail

In Extremis is a novel about death and family and religious faith, about fidelity and infidelity… It is intelligent, comic, sad and at times disturbing… Parks has a remarkable talent for presenting the waywardness of thought… Good fiction makes you think and feel at the same time. This novel does that very well, at times comically, at times distressingly.

—— Scotsman

A tense, believable black comedy

—— Melissa Katsoulis , The Times

Beyond the fierce and questioning intelligence are both humour and artfully constructed and invariably gripping plots

—— Independent on Sunday

This is what a novel should be - gutsy, moving, funny, tragic, true – and with a syntax to die for. Tim Parks is in a league of his own. He makes every other English author of his generation look lame. In Extremis, in exacting detail, depicts the naked truth of marriage and aging, sex and death, family. Brilliant, brutal and all too quick – like life.

—— Henry Sutton

A master of emotional complexity

—— Sunday Telegraph

In Extremis is simply spellbinding and quite unique in my reading experience; very funny and very existential, compact and chatty, complicated and raw. Parks has written a masterpiece.

—— Per Wästberg

A thrillingly unsentimental—thrilling because unsentimental—meditation on every aspect and orifice of the human body.

—— David Shields

Parks writes with wit and intelligence

—— The Times

A writer of considerable intelligence and great technical skill...tremendously readable

—— Guardian

An exceptionally acute observer of modern life

—— Daily Telegraph

In Extremis is by turns funny, poignant and thought-provoking. Structured with subtle intricacy, superbly controlled, and emotionally intelligent, this is a book to love

—— UK Press Syndication

The Parks remains one of Britain’s most seriously under-celebrated novelists… In Extremis is often hilarious… The humour, clever asides, effortless plotting, astute characterisation, sense of everyday chaos and compelling readability will come as no surprise to his seasoned readers, yet the telling achievement of what is his finest book to date lies in its unexpected tenderness and beauty… Intuitive and humane, funny and sad – as real as life and death, as is Thomas Sanders, warts and all. This likely Man Booker contender is a British novel possessed of a sophisticated European resonance

—— Eileen Battersby , Irish Times

The dreamlike quality of the stories in Men Without Women is undoubtedly one of its chief attractions… Murakami’s womenless men live in perpetual daydreams, a state of mind often prompted by a loss of some kind… Murakami’s latest is a hypnotising study of male loneliness

—— Paddy Kehoe , Independent

Potent storytelling and a generous cast of minor yet memorable characters… make for a helter-skelter read that’s clever, comic and pulsing with humanity

—— Mail on Sunday

Thematically taut and compulsively paced.

—— Edmund Gordon , Sunday Times

A very good novel of anxiety, embarrassment and also, somehow, the depths of Englishness.

—— Evening Standard

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

—— Literary Review

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

—— Penguin

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

—— Rachel Kushner

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

—— Mirza Waheed

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

—— Bernardine Evaristo

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

—— Independent on Sunday

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

—— New Yorker

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

—— Cressida Connolly , The Spectator

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

—— Mark Damazer , New Statesman

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

—— Simon Heffer , Daily Telegraph

A novel offering more hope

—— Daisy Goodwin , Daily Mail

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

—— Ann Treneman , The Times

Masterly

—— Anna Murphy
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