The Diary of a Nobody the first, "The Diary of a Somebody", is a direct reference to the Grossmith original. Reviewing this volume in "The Spectator", Benny Green points out several parallels with the original, in both character and event. Matthew's book, says Green, is amusing, but the Grossmiths' book is superior; it is "affecting as well as comical, in a way that the Matthew pastiche is not". In 1982 came the first appearance of Sue Townsend's teenage creation, Adrian Mole, whose passage into young manhood and early middle age is charted in a long series of diaries. The more middle-aged he becomes, says Morton,
The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole the other books. There are short collections of Adrian's classic diary entries covering important events over a brief period of a few days (such as Christmas, Adrian leaving home, Adrian's first job etc.) during the mid-1980s, but the continuous regular diary entries from the other books are absent. There are also several longer transcripts of radio programmes on Pirate Radio Four, plus collections of letters and correspondence with characters from the earlier books, including Barry Kent, who is in prison. This format means that it covers a longer time span than any other Adrian Mole book at the expense of