PENGUIN BOOKS
Praise for Queen Camilla:
‘Wickedly satirical, mad, ferociously farcical, subversive. Great stuff ’ Daily Mail
Praise for Number Ten :
‘A delight. Genuinely funny … compassion shines through the unashamedly ironic social commentary’ Guardian
Praise for The Public Confessions of a Middle-aged Woman Aged 55¾ :
‘Proof, once more, that Townsend is one of the funniest writers around’ The Times
Praise for Ghost Children :
‘Bleak, tender and deeply affecting. Seldom have I rooted so hard for a set of fi ctional individuals’ Mail on Sunday
Praise for Adrian Mole:
‘Adrian Mole really is a brilliant comic creation’ The Times
‘Every sentence is witty and well thought out, and the whole has reverberations beyond itself ’ The Times
‘He will be remembered some day as one of England’s great diarists’ Evening Standard
‘The publishers could offer a money-back guarantee if you don’t laugh and be sure they wouldn’t have to write a single cheque’ Jeremy Paxman
‘A classic. The Adrian Mole diaries are thoroughly subversive. A true hero for our time’ Richard Ingrams
‘The real greatness of Townsend’s creation comes from the gap between aspiration and reality. Adrian Mole is one of literature’s great underachievers; his tragedy is that he knows it and the sadness of this undercuts the humour and makes us laugh not until, but while, it hurts’ Daily Mail
‘Adrian Mole is one of the great comic characters of our time … [Townsend] never writes a sentence which doesn’t ring true; she never gets Adrian’s voice wrong or attributes a thought or feeling to him which strikes one as false. Whatever happens, we may be sure that new troubles will assail Adrian, that new disasters will threaten, but that he will survive them all. Like Evelyn Waugh’s Captain Grimes, Adrian is "one of the immortals" and the series of his diaries the comic masterpiece of our time’ Scotsman
‘Probably the most successful comic literary creation of the past two decades’ Observer
‘This joyous satire confi rms Townsend as the absolute monarch of comic fi ction’ Daily Mail
‘One of the great fi ctional creations of our time … a joy’ Scotsman
‘I not only wept, I howled and hooted and had to get up and walk around the room and wipe my eyes so that I could go on reading’ Tom Sharpe
‘The funniest, most bittersweet book you’re likely to read this year’ Daily Mirror
‘Wonderfully funny and sharp as knives’ Sunday Times
‘A very, very funny book’ Sunday Times
‘I can’t remember a more relentlessly funny book’ Daily Mirror
‘Very funny indeed. A satire of our times’ Sunday Times
‘The funniest book of the year. I can think of no more comical read’ Jeremy Paxman, Sunday Telegraph
‘Brilliant, sharp, honest, moving, an exquisite social comedy’ Daily Telegraph