True Confessions of Margaret Hilda Roberts Aged 14 ¼

by Sue Townsend

  SAVAGE, KIM

  Peter Savage’s estranged wife, a former society florist from the East End with no intention of taking elocution lessons.

  STOAT, ARTHUR

  Head of Stoat Books, editor of Offally Good! – The Book. His record for turning a book around is three weeks, with Diana at My Fingertips by her personal manicurist. Adrian Mole presents more of a challenge.

  TAIT, ARCHIE

  Ancient, ascetic revolutionary socialist, with one leg and one lung. Gravely ill and lives alone with his cat, Andrew. Adrian is compelled by conscience to help him, despite wondering if he will ever be free of pensioners with their ‘liver-spotted hands circling my neck’.

  Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction

  (October 2002–July 2004)

  ANIMAL

  Monstrously strong builder helping George and Pauline Mole to renovate The Piggeries. Communicates with Pauline in grunts and listens to the anecdotes George has told thirty times before. When asked his real name answers ‘Animal’.

  BLUNT, KEN

  Long-serving member of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group, specializing in rabidly anti-American polemic. Not a natural diplomat, but a friend to Adrian.

  BOND, JOHNNY

  Travel agent at Latesun Ltd who steadfastly refuses to refund a £57.10 deposit for Adrian’s cancelled holiday. The ability or otherwise of Saddam Hussein to deliver Weapons of Mass Destruction to Cyprus within 45 minutes is central to his case.

  CARLTON-HAYES, HUGH

  Adrian’s elderly employer; one of the last of the provincial antiquarian booksellers. The person that Adrian most admires, despite knowing nothing about his private life. A refined and gentle man, but not averse to a punch-up; he is a life-long enemy of Michael Flowers after they came to blows over Tolkein’s prose style in the car park of the Central Lending Library.

  FLOWERS, DAISY

  Half-sister of Marigold. Darkly fascinating London-based PR to the famous who claims to be ‘the author of my own life’. Adrian is strangely attracted to her hedonism and complete disinterest in Dostoevsky; frightened by her passionate opposition to the Iraq war. Immaculate, but not as individualistic as she would like to believe, having recently undergone a full Nigella Lawson re-model. She lives in expensive disorder, with a growing pile of high-ticket designer goods flagged as potential returns.

  FLOWERS, MARIGOLD

  A thirty-something on-the-shelf depressive who works at Country Organics and accidentally becomes Adrian’s girlfriend. Builds miniature dolls’ houses; performs Mary in a peripatetic Nativity with the Leicester Mummers, and is even less fun than this sounds. Fatally for Adrian, she has beautifully soft skin and fragile wrists. A ‘manipulative, hysterical hypochondriac’, according to Daisy Flowers.

  FLOWERS, MICHAEL

  Father of Marigold; the scratchy-sweatered proprietor of Country Organics and counter-tenor in the Madrigal Society. An English ‘back to nature’ fascist with plans for Adrian Mole, he is both repulsive and oddly persuasive. Has a severe aversion to Mexico and Mexicans.

  FLOWERS, NETTA

  Mother of Marigold, uncommitted wife of Michael. Incredibly pink, she resembles a very pretty pig. Shows more affection for her compost heap than her family.

  FLOWERS, POPPY

  Sister of Marigold. Scientologist maths teacher whose distinguishing feature and main reason for living is her extraordinarily long hair. Not keen on her family’s medievalism; she prefers the Romans, for their civilizing influence and ‘amazing hair products’.

  FORDINGBRIDGE, GLADYS

  Elderly member and regular host of the Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group. Her literary output consists entirely of sub-Pam Ayres cat poems; one of which, ‘Naughty Paws’, achieves the difficult task of rhyming ‘Whiskas’ with ‘discus’.

  GEILGUD

  Evil leader of a disruptive flock of swans at Rat Wharf, named after his resemblance to the classical English actor. Adrian believes Geilgud holds a personal grudge, claiming to see ‘a sneer on his beak’ during his attacks.

  GRAHAM

  Nigel Hetherington’s guide dog. The only living thing he has ever truly loved and a better friend to him than Adrian ever was. A creature with eerie intelligence.

  LESLIE

  Mr Carlton-Hayes’ partner, of whom Adrian knows absolutely nothing, except that she/he is reportedly not as keen on books as Mr Carlton-Hayes.

  HENDERSON, BRUCE (‘BRAINBOX’)

  Adrian’s old school ‘friend’, winner of ‘geek of the year’ at Neil Armstrong Comprehensive. Owns his own consultancy firm, Idiotech, supplier of non-threatening technology solutions to computerphobes. Has plenty of money and needs somebody to spend it on.

  HOPKINS, BERNARD

  Very temporary assistant at Carlton-Hayes’ Books. A hopelessly drunk ex-bookseller and one of the most politically incorrect men hi Leicester; his standard term of address is ‘cocker.’ Disdains all ‘bint’ authors and anything written after Nabakov, although ‘Salman’ is supposedly a personal friend.

  MILKSOP, GARY

  Over-sensitive, tetchy member of the Leicestershire and Rutland Writing Group. The author of an epic experimental novel that has been worked on for fifteen years. The masterpiece spends two thousand words on Gary’s first memory of eating a Hobnob and is unfinished.

  IVAN

  Tastelessly named replacement for the NEW DOG, which died on Christmas Day 2001, or was ’killed’ by Adrian, according to his parents.

  PARVEZ, MOHAMMED

  Adrian’s friend and financial adviser. A realist who lives within his means, choosing to work from a bedroom office with Postman Pat wallpaper. His concerned but pragmatic advice is generally ignored. Enjoys the drama of cutting up his clients’ charge cards.

  STAINFORTH, ROBBIE

  Glenn Mole’s best friend, a shy 18-year-old fellow soldier in the Royal Logistics Corps. According to Glenn, he knows ‘a lot about everything’. Adrian sends him ‘improving books’ by BFPO and privately wishes Glenn was more like Robbie.

  WONG, WAYNE

  Adrian’s old school friend; the cynical owner of the best Chinese restaurant in town, the Imperial Dragon (Wong’s), the only place Adrian really feels at home. A ten per cent discount and a good table near the fish tank are usually available. Not a fan of Marigold Flowers, whom he thinks resembles one of his soo-quid-per-throw carp.

  Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

  (June 2007–May 2008)

  DOCTOR PEARCE

  An English lecturer with John Lennon glasses and ‘overlarge breasts’. She enthusiastically pursues the possibility of an affair with Adrian, to his dismay. Overrun by her four children.

  DR WLFOWICZ

  Adrian’s Polish GP. A mournful giant who looks more like ‘a Gdansk steelworker’ than a doctor. Yearns for his wife and home.

  FAIRFAX-LYCETT, HUGO

  Heir of Fairfax Hall. A ravaged but handsome aristocrat and self-confessed establishment figure, who is building a safari park in his grounds. Employer of Daisy Mole, who is sourcing his giraffes.

  LEWIS-MASTERS, DOROTHEA

  Elderly upper-class world traveller and former camel-accessory importer. Frequently quotes the wisdom of the North African ‘men of the desert’. She lives in a large Georgian house, stuffed full of animal skins and heads.

  MOLE, GRACIE

  Adrian and Daisy’s four-year-old daughter, who is already displaying ‘alarmingly Stalinist tendencies’. Usually to be found wearing her little mermaid costume and being carried, as ‘Fish can’t walk’.

  SALLY

  A ‘small but sturdy’, homely radiotherapist. Adrian is fascinated by her disastrous relationship with wolf-conservationist boyfriend, Anthony.

  The Mole Books

  FRIDAY JANUARY 2ND

  I felt rotten today. It’s my mother’s fault for singing ‘My way’ at two o’clock in the morning at the top of the stairs. Just my luck to have a mother like her. There is a chance
my parents could be alcoholics. Next year I could be in a children’s home

  Meet Adrian Mole, a hapless teenager providing an unabashed, pimples-and-all glimpse into adolescent life.

  ‘Townsend has held as mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see in it’

  Sunday Telegraph

  SUNDAY JULY 18TH

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

  In this second instalment of teenager Adrian Mole’s diaries, the Mole family is in crisis and the country is beating the drum of war. While his parents have reconciled after both embarked on disastrous affairs, Adrian is shocked to learn of his mother’s pregnancy.

  ‘The funniest, most bitter-sweet book you’re likely to read this year’

  Daily Mirror

  MONDAY JUNE 13TH

  I had a good, proper look at myself in the mirror tonight I’ve always wanted to look clever, but at the age of twenty years and three months I have to admit that I look like a person who never even heard of Jung or updike

  Adrian Mole is an adult. At least that’s what it says on his passport. But living at home, clinging to his threadbare cuddly rabbit ‘Pinky’, working as a paper pusher for the DoE and pining for the love of his life, Pandora, has proved to him that adulthood isn’t quite what he expected. Still, without the slings and arrows of modern life what else would an intellectual poet have to write about …

  ‘Essential reading for Mole followers’ Times Educational Supplement

  THURSDAY JANUARY 3RD

  I have the most terrible problems with my sex life it all boils down to the fact that I have no sex life. At least not with another person

  Finally given the heave-ho by Pandora, Adrian Mole finds himself in the unenviable situation of living with the love-of-his-life as she goes about shacking up with other men. Worse, as he slides down the employment ladder, from deskbound civil servant in Oxford to part-time washer-upper in Soho, he finds that critical reception for his epic novel, Lo! The Flat Hills of My Homeland, is not quite as he might have hoped.

  ‘A very, very funny book’ Sunday Times

  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 13TH

  Here I am again – in my old bedroom Older, wiser, but with less hair, unfortunately. The atmosphere in this house is very bad. The dog looks permanently exhausted. Every time the phone rings my mother snatches it up as though a kidnapper were on the line

  Adrian Mole is thirty, single and a father. His cooking at a top London restaurant has been equally mocked (‘the sausage on my plate could have been a turd’ – AA Gill) and celebrated (will he be the nation’s first celebrity offal chef?). And the love of his life, Pandora Braithwaite, is the newly elected MP for Ashby-de-la-Zouch – one of ‘Blair’s Babes’. He is frustrated, disappointed and undersexed.

  ‘Three cheers for Mole’s chaotic, non-achieving, dysfunctional family. We need him’

  Evening Standard

  MONDAY JANUARY 3, 2000

  So how do I greet the New Millennium? In despair I’m a single parent, I live with my mother … I have a bald spot the size of a jaffa cake on the back of my head … I can’t go on like this, drifting into early middle-age I need a Life Plan …

  The ‘same age as Jesus when he died’, Adrian Mole has become a martyr: a single father bringing up two young boys in an uncaring world. With the ever-unattainable Pandora pursuing her ambition to become Labour’s first female PM, his over-achieving half-brother Brett sponging off him, and literary success ever-elusive, Adrian tries to make ends meet and find a purpose.

  ‘One of the great comic creations of our time’ Scotsman

  WEDNESDAY APRIL 2ND

  My birthday I am thirty-five today. I am officially middle-aged. It is all downhill from now. A pathetic slide towards gum disease, wheelchair ramps and death.

  Adrian Mole is middle-aged but still scribbling. Working as a bookseller and living in Leicester’s Rat Wharf; finding time to write letters of advice to Tim Henman and Tony Blair; locked in mortal combat with a vicious swan called Gielgud; measuring his expanding bald spot; and trying to win-over the voluptuous Daisy …

  ‘Completely hilarious, laugh-out-loud, a joy’ Daily Mirror

  SUNDAY 1S’T JULY

  NO SMOKING DAY

  A momentous day! Smoking in a public place or place of work is forbidden in England Though if you’re a lunatic, a prisoner, an MP or a member of the Royal Family you are exempt.

  Adrian Mole is thirty-nine and a quarter. He lives in the country in a semi-detached converted pigsty with his wife Daisy and their daughter. His parents George and Pauline live in the adjoining pigsty. But all is not well.

  The secondhand bookshop in which Adrian works is threatened with closure. The spark has fizzled out of his marriage. His mother is threatening to write her autobiography (A Girl Called Shit). And Adrian’s nightly trips to the lavatory have become alarmingly frequent …

  ‘unflinchingly funny’ Sunday Times

  THE MONARCHY HAS BEEN DISMANTLED

  When a republican party wins the General Election, their first act in power is to strip the Royal Family of their assets and titles and send them to live on a housing estate in the Midlands.

  Exchanging Buckingham Palace for a two-bedroomed semi in Hell Close (as the locals dub it), caviar for boiled eggs, servants for a social worker named Trish, the Queen and her family learn what it means to be poor among the great unwashed. But is their breeding sufficient to allow them to rise above their changed circumstance or deep down are they really just like everyone else?

  ‘No other author could imagine this so graphically, demolish the institution so wittily and yet leave the family with its human dignity intact’ The Times

  ‘Absorbing, entertaining … the funniest thing in print since Adrian Mole’ Ruth Rendell, Daily Telegraph

  ‘Kept me rolling about until the last page’ Daily Mail

  What if being Royal was a crime?

  The UK has come over all republican. The Royal Family has been exiled to an Exclusion Zone with the other villains and spongers. And to cap it all, the Queen has threatened to abdicate.

  Yet Prince Charles is more interested in root vegetables than reigning … unless his wife Camilla can be Queen in a newly restored monarchy. But when a scoundrel who claims to be the couple’s secret lovechild offers to take the crown off their hands, the stage is set for a right Royal showdown.

  ‘Wickedly satirical, mad, ferociously farcical, subversive. Great stuff’ Daily Mail

  Behind the doors of the most famous address in the country, all is not well.

  Edward Clare was voted into Number Ten after a landslide election victory. But a few years later and it is all going wrong. The love of the people is gone. The nation is turning against him.

  Panicking, Prime Minister Clare enlists the help of Jack Sprat, the policeman on the door of No 10, and sets out to discover what the country really thinks of him. In disguise, they venture into the great unknown: the mean streets of Great Britain …

  ‘A delight. Genuinely funny … compassion shines through the unashamedly ironic social commentary’ Guardian

  Enter the world of Sue Townsend …

  This sparkling collection of Sue Townsend’s hilarious non-fiction covers everything from hosepipe bans to Spanish restaurants, from writer’s block to slug warfare, from slob holidays to the banning of beige.

  These funny, perceptive and touching pieces reveal Sue, ourselves and the nation in an extraordinary new light. Sit back and chortle away as one of Britain’s most popular and acclaimed writers takes a feather to your funny bone.

  ‘Full of homely, hilarious asides on the absurdities of domestic existence … What a fantastic advertisement for middle-age – it can’t be bad if it’s this funny’ Heat

  Seventeen years ago Angela Carr aborted an unwanted child. The child’s father, Christopher Moore, was devastated by the loss and he retreated from the world. Unable to accept what
had happened between them, both went their separate ways.

  However, when Christopher makes a horrifying discovery whilst out walking his dog on the heath he finds that he is compelled to confront Angela about the past. As they start seeing each another again can they avoid the mistakes of the past? And will their future together be eclipsed by those mistakes of yesterday?

  ‘Gripping and disturbing. Utterly absorbing’ Independent

  THE BEGINNING

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