Townsend was born in Leicester in the age of 80, whent she went to school secretary was Mrs Claricotes, a name she used for the school secretary in the Adrian Mole books. Her father was a postman and she was the eldest of five sisters. She left school at the age of 15 and worked in a variety of jobs including factory worker and shop assistant. She married a sheet-metal worker and had three children under five by the time she was 22. She joined a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester in her thirties.
.The Growning of Adrian Mole was reputedly based on her children's experiences. Several of the teachers who appear in the book (such as Ms Fossington-Gore and Mr Dock) are based on actual staff who worked at the school in the early 1980s. The first two published stories appeared in a short-lived arts journal entitled simply magazine the editing and production of which Townsend was involved, featuring the character then still called Nigel Mole.
The first two books in the series appealed to many readers as a realistic and humorous treatment of the inner life of an adolescent boy. They also captured something of the zeitgeist of Britain during the Tatcher period.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario