Background
Townsend was born in Leicester, the eldest of five sisters. Her father had worked at a factory making jet engines before becoming a postman, while her mother worked in a factory canteen.
Townsend was born in Leicester, the eldest of five sisters. Her father had worked at a factory making jet engines before becoming a postman, while her mother worked in a factory canteen.
She worked in a variety of jobs including factory worker and shop assistant, joining a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre, Leicester in her thirties. At the age of 35, she won the Thames Television Playwright Award for her play Womberang (published in Bazaar and Rummage, 1984) and started her writing career. Other plays followed including The Great Celestial Cow (1984), Ten Tiny Fingers, Nine Tiny Toes (1990), and most recently Are You Sitting Comfortably? but she has become most well-known for her series of books about Adrian Mole.
The first of these, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4 was published in 1982 and was followed by The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1984). These two books made her the best-selling novelist of the 1980s. They have been followed by several more in the same series.
Several books have been adapted for the stage, including The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4: the Play (1985), and The Queen and I: a Play with Songs (1994) which was performed by the Out of Joint Touring Company at the Vaudeville Theatre and toured Australia.
In 2001, Sue Townsend published The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman aged 55 3/4 (2001), a collection of monthly columns written for Sainsbury's magazine from 1993-2001. Leicester University awarded her an Honorary MA in 1991.
Her first husband - Keith Townsend ( children - Sean, Daniel and Victoria) (1964 - 1971) (divorced)
Her second husband - Colin Broadway ( daughter - Elizabeth) (1985 - 10 April 2014)