The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole is a British series of books written by Sue Townsend which focus on the life of Adrian Mole, one of life's losers, and his exploits and opinions of both the world's and social situations in the county of Leicestershire. The series begins when Mole is a thirteen-year-old delinquent and ends when he finds out he will be a grandfather at the age of forty-two. A sequel was produced in 2011 to highlight the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, and Townsend had been working on another Adrian Mole book at the time of her death in April 2014.
Before the Adrian Mole books, there was a radio series entitled The Secret Diary of Nigel Mole, aged 13 3/4, but the name was deemed too close to that of Nigel Molesworth.
Main characters
Mole family
Pauline Mole
George Mole George was born in 1940 to parents Albert (or Arnold/Arthur) and Edna May Mole. He was the elder brother to Susan Mole, his lesbian sister, who married a woman called Amanda and works in Holloway Prison.
He fell in love with his future wife, Pauline Sugden, and they married, having a son, Adrian. Pauline rejected Adrian for a year, leaving George to look after him, something Adrian never knew until he was middle-aged. George took a job selling electrical storage heaters, but he is later made redundant; he later finds re-employment maintaining the banks of the local canal. George, Pauline and Adrian lived together at their house on Wisteria Walk, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire.
However, he and Pauline had several marital problems, and they both left each other for different people on various occasions. Pauline left George for insurance salesman Alan Lucas in the early 1980s, but later returned (pregnant with Rosie), telling George that the baby was his. Soon after, George left Pauline for his former colleague Doreen Slater, fathering a son, Brett, with her. This hurt Pauline because Brett was a name that she had wanted to call her child, believing all Bretts were successful in life. Eventually, after months of suspicion, George confessed his affair and secret son to Pauline and Adrian on their family holiday to Skegness; Pauline ordered him to return to Doreen, and then got Tania Braithwaite to collect them. George, Doreen and Doreen's son, Maxwell, moved in with George's mother. When Maxwell's father, and Doreen's previous boyfriend, Trevor Roper returns from the army, Doreen swiftly abandons George for Trevor, leading to George reconciling with Pauline. Happiness did not last, and eventually the Moles got divorced in 1990. Pauline got wed to toyboy lover Martin Muffett, twenty-three years her junior, and George started living with his lover Belinda Bellingham, owner of a company selling home security systems. These relationships both end sourly - Martin leaves Pauline for Adrian's girlfriend Bianca, and Belinda throws George out when she discovers that he has been selling her product in back-street boozers for half their retail value.
George and Pauline remarry in 1993 and take on primary responsibility for Adrian's son William, as Adrian is spending most of the week in Soho, working at Savage's Restaurant as head chef. This life continues for a while until the general election, when Adrian's childhood sweetheart Pandora Braithwaite became Ashby-de-la-Zouch's Labour MP in a landslide vote. Pauline, in an initially drunken mistake, had sex with Pandora's father Ivan in Ivan and his wife Tania's gazebo. This developed into an affair, until Pauline and Ivan left their spouses for each other. Tania offered George a shoulder to cry on at the Braithwaite homestead, The Lawns, and they began a relationship, successfully bemusing and confusing Adrian, Pandora, Rosie and William. The couples married, but Pauline and Ivan's happiness was cut short when Ivan drowned on his honeymoon. George and Tania continued living at The Lawns, with George helping Tania transform her house when she was undergoing a Japanese phase, but George falls from a ladder trying to construct a pagoda, breaking his spine and suffering deep cuts from all the credit cards in his pocket. While staying in hospital, George's spine was mended, but he contracted a superbug from some shoddily cleaned equipment, causing him to be isolated and stay in hospital for upwards of eighteen months. Upon his recovery, Pauline managed to tempt George away from Tania, remarrying for a third and final time. This caused Tania to have a slight breakdown, combined with the loss of Ivan. George and Pauline move from Wisteria Walk to the (fictional) community of Mangold Parva, converting two disused pigsties into housing for themselves and Adrian's new family - Adrian, his wife Daisy and daughter Gracie. George quietens down in his later life, although he breaks his back again and has numerous strokes. He does agree to go on The Jeremy Kyle Show with Pauline, Rosie and Pauline's former lover Alan Lucas, to settle the long-running dispute over Rosie's paternity. When it is proven that Rosie is Lucas's child, George becomes withdrawn, hurt by Rosie's swift rejection of him and making him question if Adrian was his child. He makes amends with Pauline and settles into old age, especially pleased when he discovers that he will become a great-grandfather.
George, like Pauline, is sometimes tactless and inefficient. He has no qualms about showing favouritism for his three children - his favourite was always Rosie, which is why he took it so hard when he discovers Rosie is not his. He does not enjoy talking about his feelings and wants his son to be a "real man", like a computer technician. One of his less attractive qualities is his openly saying that he married Adrian's mother Pauline because of "how good her legs looked in a miniskirt".
Rosie Mole
Brett Slater/Mole Brett Slater, later Brett Mole, is the result of an affair between George Mole and Doreen Slater in the early 1980s, meaning he is Adrian's half-brother. Brett, a name his father stole from his then-wife Pauline, has an elder half-brother, Maxwell. The Slater family and George lived for a short time with George's mother Edna and eventually Brett moved with his mother and brother to Bournemouth. Brett re-enters Adrian's life in 2001, as an Oxford undergraduate who has been commissioned by Channel 4 to shoot a documentary on a council estate, and chose Adrian's site. Brett is everything Adrian ever wanted to be; rich, successful and popular with women. During the short time he stayed with his brother, he became a role model for Adrian's sons Glenn and William and left cables, cameras and crew all over Adrian's house. When the documentary flopped, Brett and his team disappeared within three hours. Brett re-appeared again in The Prostrate Years as a successful businessman who lost his empire and three riverside apartments in London, Tokyo and New York City to the credit crunch. He informs the Mole family that Doreen Slater died in a motorbike accident which, to Adrian, seemed to be a fabricated version of what really happened - there were a few facts that did not add up. Upon his arrival, Brett proceeded to steal the eyes of Adrian's daughter Gracie, wife Daisy and both Adrian's parents. Brett bought ten packs of white cotton shirts and threw each one away after only a day's wear. Adrian clears up after him, stops his brother's alcoholism and generally sorts him out; Brett lives on with Adrian after getting his life back on track before leaving once again.
Extended family Edna May Mole, commonly known as Grandma (22 March 1905 – 1 March 1992), is the paternal grandmother of Adrian and mother of George and Susan. Provider of Sunday dinners, constant electricity and unwanted religion, Edna is a strict, no-nonsense widow, and has lived alone since the death of her husband. She does not believe in home security systems; if she goes out, she turns up Radio 4 and leaves the door unlocked, also claiming that if she fitted one people would think she had something worth stealing. Edna dotes on her grandchild and will often give him money for a Mars Bar, usually for Adrian helping and tidying his room. Edna is well renowned in the family for her wonderful Sunday dinners, and it is remarked that she used the same Yorkshire pudding tin for forty years. She, and her husband, are strongly opposed to their daughter's lesbianism. Edna has a love/hate relationship with her daughter-in-law Pauline - and, subsequently, her relatives the Sugdens - as Edna disapproves of her wanton behaviour, yet when Pauline and George divorce she still visits her regularly. Edna keeps money in three separate vases: one for gas, electricity and heating. Edna dies during The Wilderness Years. Following her death, Pauline shows a momentous outpouring of grief, to the family's surprise. Edna and Albert have three great-grandchildren - Glenn, William and Gracie - and a great-great-grandchild (unborn as of 2008). Albert Mole, commonly known as Grandad Mole (died 1977), is Adrian's deceased paternal grandfather and the father of George and Susan. Adrian mentions that when he was six, a dog bit his arm and his grandmother put iodine on the wound while Albert kicked the dog around the kitchen. Albert was a veteran of both World War I and II; alongside mentions of his serving in the Battle of Ypres, his son George once said "just the sound of Lilli Marlene and he would be crying. Your Grandma would send him out the room to pull himself together". He is once described as cold and would tire quickly of his grandson's frequent questions, much to his bewilderment. He, and his wife, are strongly opposed to their daughter's lesbianism. Adrian remembers the family wanting to pay their last respects to Albert in his coffin, but nobody could find the screwdriver to lift the lid off with. He used to work at the factory on Rat Wharf - Adrian later moves into a block of flats standing where the factory used to be. There has always been some confusion over his name; in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ and The Wilderness Years, his name is given as Albert; in Growing Pains, his name is given as Arnold, and in Weapons of Mass Destruction, his name is given as Arthur. Albert and Edna have three great-grandchildren - Glenn, William and Gracie - and a great-great-grandchild (unborn as of 2008). Susan Mole, better known as Auntie Susan, is the daughter of Albert and Edna, sister of George and aunt of Adrian. She works as a prison guard at Holloway, and always gets Adrian's birthday wrong. Susan, a lesbian, is first seen dating Gloria, but a reference is later made of her marriage to a woman named Amanda. Susan gave advice to Nigel Hetherington when he was planning to tell his parents that he was gay; she said "I just came out with it. 'Mum, I'm gay. Like it or lump it.' Minus the screaming and shouting, it was over in two minutes", to Nigel's response of "Oh, how brave!". Susan always sends Adrian birthday cards which he describes as "vulgar!" and "in extremely bad taste"; one example is a Christmas card she sends him with "the carrot in the wrong place". Susan has two great-nephews, Glenn and William, and a great-niece, Gracie. She smokes Panama cigarettes.