The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

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The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The first surprise to many readers who loved Adrian in the seminal The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ – even the title is funny – and perhaps Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years, which was televised for the BBC, is that Townsend has been quite so prolific in writing about her best-loved creation. Characters who had stepped out of the series are back where they were, little details are forgotten.

He thanks his father after learning that he raised him single-handedly during the first year of his life when Pauline was suffering from postpartum depression. Over several books he develops a script for a white van serial killer comedy programme which the BBC is reluctant to produce. Just like many teenagers who lock themselves in their rooms writing book reviews and singing pop songs, Adrian is no different. Though not especially popular he has a small circle of friends and even a girlfriend Pandora Braithwaite (whose parents Ivan and Tania are affluent Trotskyites).In between the ups and downs of his relationship with the divine Pandora and worrying that his genius is going unrecognized, Adrian Mole chronicles the pains and pleasures of a misspent adolescence.

I enjoyed Adrian the first time through but, as an adolescent girl, I probably viewed him a bit more condescendingly than I would now! Glenn moves in with his father and it is revealed the boy has a lot of respect for him when Adrian sees the cover of his diary. Eventually Adrian moves into his parents' converted pigsties, along with Marigold's sister Daisy, whom he marries.

Adrian is asked out in science class by one Elizabeth Sally Broadway, her daughter with husband Colin Broadway, and Adrian and Pandora see a pantomime starring Carole Hayman as the Princess, Sue Pomeroy as Widow Twankey and Lou Wakefield as the cow; all three of whom were regular collaborators of Townsend’s work on stage. 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!

When Hattie is sent to her room for being sick in her step-father's fish tank, she decides to start writing a diary and sort her life out. Upon reading "The True Confessions of Adrian Mole" I must say that I find it rather unnerving after two books covering daily entries from Adrian's life over a period of 1 1/2 years each, having the third volume of the series (no lengthier than the first two) feature essays, radio broadcasts, selected letters and covering a period of 5+ years. Our team is made up of book lovers who are dedicated to sourcing and providing the best books for kids.The BOOK is in Very Good++ or better condition with light pushing at the spine tips and mild bumping at the lower corners. He is a very unlikable and self-centered character making enjoy the book less and less and the story went on. Though we’ll never learn Adrian’s fate, his diagnosis of prostate cancer in the last book made for a potentially bleak future.

I feel sorry for Roderick Mills, who was tasked with designing the new covers, because the original cover (the bathroom mirror with a shaving kit and Noddy toothbrush, beautifully demonstrating the dichotomies inherent within a youth becoming a man) is rightly iconic – something that is tacitly admitted by including it on the inside cover of the new Secret Diary.

Telling us candidly about his parents' marital troubles, The Dog, his life as a tortured poet and 'misunderstood intellectual', his love for the divine Pandora and his horror at learning of his mother's pregnancy, Adrian's painfully honest diary is a hilarious and heartfelt chronicle of misspent adolescence. More importantly, I believed in this characters all over again and was sad when it came to the last page. As beloved by critics as she was by readers the length and breadth of the nation, she chronicled the lives of ordinary people in Britain through times of upheaval and great social change. When the series begins, Mole is – of course – 13 ¾, and by the final volume (so far; Townsend’s only comment about the future is her hope that Adrian go “onward, ever onward”) he is 40 and a grandfather, and it is a great tribute to the series that the child is still recognisable in the adult. The character of Adrian Mole is really good, realistic and interesting - I particularly love him with Pandora and the school trip scene.