The Adrian Mole Collection

Jul 12, 2025 8:59 AM

Author:Sue Townsend

The hilarious, bestselling follow-ups to Sue Townsend's The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 : The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole and Adrian Mole: The Wilderness together in one volume.

Sunday July 18th.

My father announced at breakfast that he is going to have a vasectomy. I pushed my sausages away untouched.

Charting nearly ten years in the life of Adrian Mole, from his increasingly troubled adolescence and schooling to his first job as newt counter for the DoE, from his parents' marital troubles to his own difficult relationship with Pandora, from the failure of his early poems to the even grander failure of his epic novels, these three novels in one volume provide a hilarious portrait of one young man's coming of age.

'He will be remembered some day as one of England's great diarists. No matter what your troubles may be Adrian Mole is sure to make you feel better' Evening Standard

'The funniest, most bitter-sweet book you're likely to read this year' Daily Mirror

'Funny, moving and a poke in the eye for adult morality' Sunday Express

Sue Townsend is Britain's favourite comic author. Since the publication of The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 in 1982, she has made us weep with laughter and pricked the nation's conscience. Seven further volumes of diaries have followed: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years, Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, The Lost Diaries of Adrian Mole, Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction and Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years. All have been acclaimed bestsellers, some have been adapted for radio and TV, starring Lulu, Julie Walters and Stephen Mangan, among others. She has also written six other popular novels (The Queen and I, Queen Camilla, Number Ten, Rebuilding Coventry, Ghost Children and The Woman Who Went to Bed for A Year) and penned many well-received plays. She lives in Leicester, where she was born and grew up.

Reviews

A novel that British readers love, and American readers love to hate...the American scenes are among the most powerful things Dickens ever did in fiction

—— Guardian

One of my favourite characters in English literature is the redoubtable Mark Tapley - a curious hybrid of Jeeves and Pollyanna who inhabits the pages of Dickens's great novel, Martin Chuzzlewit.

—— Michael Simkins , Daily Telegraph

After leaving school, I sought refuge from the perils of office life by reading under my desk or on park benches during the lunch hour. Dickens was my preferred means of escape

—— Jeremy Lewis , Daily Telegraph

Dickens' funniest novel

—— William Boyd

Extremely funny and sharply observed... Seizes the noble tradition of the Journalism Novel and rings some delightful changes on it

—— Independent

Tightly written and pacy. The central characters are believable, the setting exact, and one would defy the reader not to feel contained, held, by the professionalism and dexterity of the author

—— Hilary Fannin , Irish Times

Richly comic and entertaining

—— Tatler

Highly entertaining

—— Guardian

Spritely satire

—— Sunday Times

A clever satire, set in 1997, about the last days of Fleet Street... Darkly entertaining

—— Red

A wide-ranging, energetic satire on what used to be called Fleet Street

—— Times Literary Supplement

When high meets lowbrow, comedy ensues, but McAfee's novel is not without serious intent. She deftly peels away her characters' pretensions, forcing readers to examine their own prejudices.

—— Scotsman

Sparky tragicomedy

—— Daily Mail

McAfee is a superlative writer and plotter...McAfee has produced a locus classicus of Fleet Street

—— Rachel Johnson , The Lady

Darkly funny but also a very timely read

—— Stylist

[A] satirical debut about the newspaper business

—— Stand Point

A cutting, hilarious portrait of British print journalism... An entirely human story that brilliantly recreates and analyses the recent past

—— The Times

Those gripped by the escalating News International scandal might enjoy the latest newspaper novel Annalena McAfee's The Spoiler

—— Glasgow Herald

authentic, entertaining and draws on her own experience as an arts journalist

—— Daily Express

The Spoiler - set in the halcyon days before phone hacking - was one of the funniest and sharpest fleet street novels in years.

—— David Robson , Sunday Telegraph Seven

McAfee - herself a former journalist - evokes two distinct eras and styles of journalism, that of fearless frontline reportage and that of its successor: style-oriented, celebrity-obsessed features coverage... This is a pacy read that leaves little doubt in the reader's mind that one school of journalism deserves more mourning than the other

—— Alex Clark , Guardian

Marvellous satire...the novel is cunningly plotted and satisfyingly nuanced

—— Independent on Sunday

If the peek into the world of newspaper journalism afforded by the Leveson inquiry has you gasping for more, then this timely paperback release is perfect...a fiendishly funny (and frighteningly plausible) world of fiddled expenses and suspect tactics

—— Shortlist

Thoroughly enjoyable behind-the-scenes expose of an ambitious celebrity journalist's attempt to nail the scoop of her life

—— Metro

This is the paperback edition. The hardback appeared before the News Corporation bosses were dragged into the Commons. McAfee was either very prescient or close to the action, holding her fictional hacks to account for printing false stories gleaned from disreputable sources

—— Julia Fernandez , Time Out

This fictionalised version of HG Wells dramatises the author's life, which was full of politics, writing and women

—— Daily Telegraph

David Lodge's HG Wells was both a visionary and a chancer; as arrogant as he was insecure; with as many noble goals as base instincts; a mass of very human contradictions; as Lodge has it, a man of parts

—— Sunday Express

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