Our cover article for this issue is ‘Sue Townsend, Adrian Mole aged 13¾ and Stoneygate’ which looks at the life of Leicester’s most cherished modern novelist and playwright and reveals the history of the Stoneygate home where she lived with her family for over 30 years.
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Regular readers will be used to articles on Stoneygate residents from the late 19th or early 20th centuries. In this piece, we focus on a more recent and better-known resident. Still a familiar name to many, as an author, writer and playwright, whose books are still popular and in print, Sue Townsend came to the attention of a wide audience when she published her sensationally successful book, “The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾” – the musings of an ordinary, if slightly pompous, adolescent boy, who tells his own story through a personal journal.
It is hard now to imagine the impact that Adrian Mole had across the world. “The Secret Diaries” was the most successful book of the 1980s and by 1990 it had been translated into 48 languages. Sales stood at over 20m copies, out-stripping other popular writers of the time, Jeffrey Archer, Jackie Collins and Barbara Taylor Bradford. Sequels to the book followed. along with TV and radio adaptations. It has been suggested that it is no exaggeration to compare her with J K Rowling today.