THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION FEATURING A BRAND-NEW INTRODUCTION FROM CAITLIN MORAN 'My comfort read. The best diaries ever written' ADAM KAY, GUARDIAN 'Every child in the country should receive a copy on their thirteenth birthday' CAITLIN MORAN 'One of literature's most endearing figures. Mole is an excellent guide for all of us' OBSERVER **In 2022 Sue Townsend was awarded the Legacy Achievement Award by the Comedy Women in Print prize** AS SEEN IN THE TIMES ________ 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 as he writes candidly about the dog, his parents' marital troubles and life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual.' Forty years after it first appeared, Sue Townsend's comic masterpiece continues to be rediscovered by new generations of readers. ________ 'The UK's bestselling fiction book of the eighties and one of the great comic creations of the past half-century. Impeccable comic timing, evergreen comic writing. I had more pure reading pleasure than from any other book I read this year' John Self, The Times 'Reading The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole when I was 14 felt quite like an awakening' GREG DAVIES, Sunday Times 'Townsend has held a mirror up to the nation and made us happy to laugh at what we see' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'One of Britain's most celebrated comic writers' GUARDIAN