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It is over 30 years since the publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ - and we are delighted to mark the occasion with a rare festival appearance of the author Sue Townsend. The diary and its sequel, The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, made Townsend the bestselling author of the 1980s and created a comic character that has never left our consciousness. There have been eight books in the Adrian Mole series, selling over eight million copies. They have been adapted for stage, screen and radio.

Townsend will discuss the enduring popularity of the Adrian Mole series and a new Mole book in preparation for 2013 with the Sunday Times chief fiction reviewer Peter Kemp. Her latest novel, The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year, was one of the bestselling paperbacks of 2012. This highly acclaimed work is the funny and touching tale of what happens when someone stops being the person everyone wants them to be.

Townsend only learnt to read when she was eight, teaching herself in three weeks when off school with mumps. She left school at 15 for a series of unfulfilling jobs but kept reading and writing in secret. She was persuaded to join a writers’ group and the rest, as they say, is history. She has written many works outside the Mole series, lots of which have gone on to be bestsellers, including The Queen and I and Number 10.