Tributes paid to Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend - 'loved by generations'

Tributes have been paid to Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend who has died aged 68.

Townsend, who was left blind after suffering from diabetes for many years, achieved global success in 1982 with the publication of her best-known work, The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, aged 13 3/4.

The author’s publishers, Penguin Books, said she died “surrounded by her family” after suffering a stroke.

Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin Random House UK, said: “Sue Townsend will be remembered as one in a handful of this country’s great comic writers. We were so proud to be her publishers.

“She was loved by generations of readers, not only because she made them laugh out loud, but because her view of the world, its inhabitants and their frailties was so generous, life affirming, and unique.”

Stephen Mangan, who played Adrian Mole in a 2001 television adaptation, tweeted his condolences, saying: “Greatly upset to hear that Sue Townsend has died. One of the warmest, funniest and wisest people I ever met.”

Townsend was born in Leicester in 1946.

She left school at the age of 15, married at 18, and by 23 was a single parent with three children.

After writing in secret for 20 years while working as a factory worker, a shop assistant, and a youth worker, she eventually joined a writers’ group at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester when she was in her 30s.

At 35 she won the Thames Playwright Award for her play Womberang and a year later published the first in her series about Adrian Mole, which she had begun writing in 1975. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 was published in 1982 and was an instant hit, going on to sell more than 20m copies around the world.

It was followed by The Growing Pains Of Adrian Mole in 1984 and six others in the Mole series, including The True Confessions Of Adrian Albert Mole and most recently Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years, in 2009.

Much of Townsend’s life was blighted by illness. She had a heart attack in her 30s and suffered from diabetes for many years, leaving her registered blind in 2001. In 2009 she had a kidney transplant, also a complication of her diabetes. Her son, Sean, was the donor.

In recent years she was wheelchair-bound, with neuropathy in her limbs.

Townsend also wrote a number of other novels, including The Queen And I and The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year.

She was awarded an honorary Masters of Arts from Leicester University and in 2008 was made a Distinguished Honorary Fellow. She was also an Honorary Doctor of Letters at Loughborough University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

In 2009 she was given the Honorary Freedom of Leicester.

She leaves behind her widower, Colin Broadway, and four children.

Adrian Mole quotes

- Now I know I am an intellectual. I saw Malcolm Muggeridge on the television last night, and I understood nearly every word. It all adds up. A bad home, poor diet, not liking punk. I think I will join the library and see what happens.

- My father was reading Playboy under cover of the candlelight and I was reading Hard Times by my key-ring torch.

- I have never seen a dead body or a female nipple. This is what comes from living in a cul de sac.

- There’s only one thing more boring than listening to other people’s dreams, and that’s listening to their problems.