''The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾'' is the first book in the Adrian Mole series of comedic fiction, written by English author

Sue Townsend Susan Lillian Townsend (; 2 April 194610 April 2014) was an English writer and humorist whose work encompasses novels, plays and works of journalism. She was best known for creating the character Adrian Mole. After writing in secret from the a ...

. The book is written in a

diary A diary is a written or audiovisual memorable record, with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digita ...

style, and focuses on the worries and regrets of a teenager who believes himself to be an intellectual. The story is set in 1981 and 1982, and in the background it refers to some of the historic events of the time, such as the

Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

and the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana as well as the birth of

Prince William William, Prince of Wales (William Arthur Philip Louis; born 21 June 1982), is the heir apparent to the British throne. He is the elder son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales. William was born during the reign of his p ...

. Mole is a fierce critic of prime minister

Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...

, listing her as one of his worst enemies. Apart from the humorous events described in the diary, a lot of the book's humour originates from the unreliable narration of Mole, who naïvely, yet confidently, misinterprets events around him. The book was first published in hardcover by Methuen on 7 October 1982. Sequels include (in chronological order): *'' The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole'' *'' The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole'' *'' Adrian Mole and the Small Amphibians'' (all of which were contained in '' Adrian Mole: From Minor to Major'') *'' Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years'' *'' Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years'' *'' Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction'' *'' Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years''

Reception

The book was a best-seller, and had sold 1.9 million copies by November 1985. It won the Australian BILBY Older Readers Award in 1990. In 2003, it was listed at No. 112 on the BBC's

The Big Read The Big Read was a survey on books that was carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, when over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel. The year-long survey was th ...

poll of the UK's best-loved books. In November 2019,

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

included ''The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾'' on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

Adaptations

A 7-part radio series on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

featured extracts from the book read by Nicholas Barnes. Townsend adapted the book for the stage in 1984 with music by

Ken Howard Kenneth Joseph Howard Jr. (March 28, 1944 – March 23, 2016) was an American actor. He was known for his roles as Thomas Jefferson in ''1776'' (1972) and as high school basketball coach and former Chicago Bulls player Ken Reeves in the televisi ...

and Alan Blaikley. There was also a 1985 television series. A successful stage production ran at the

Wyndham's Theatre Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by actor/manager Charles Wyndham (the other is the Criterion Theatre). Located on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, it was designed c. 1898 by W. G. R. Sprague, the arch ...

, London, in 1984–1986, that included Simon Gipps-Kent and followed with a road tour.SimonGipps-Kent.info / ''Theatre Door Doings''
A stage musical adaptation by Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary opened at Leicester's

Curve In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line, but that does not have to be straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point. This is the definition that ...

Theatre in March 2015. Townsend had been working on the project at the time of her death in 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole, Aged 13, The 1982 British novels British young adult novels Fictional diaries Novels set in Leicestershire Novels set in the 1980s BILBY Award–winning works Adrian Mole novels Methuen Publishing books