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,
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction and is rude and contemptuous to him, despite Adrian's (often clearly misguided) attempts to involve him in his writer's workshop and cheer him up. He is given a guide dog for his condition, to which he develops an emotional attachment. The son of Adrian Mole. Glenn, to his father's considerable annoyance, possesses none of his father's "intelligence" and opts to join the British Army. Stationed in Iraq, he is positively encouraged by his father to fight in a war with no foreseeable end. Towards the end, Adrian's opinion of the war has radically changed. The best friend of Glenn, Adrian's