Sue Townsend rightly has the reputation as one of our finest comic novelists. Adrian Mole is one of the great comic characters and Sue Townsend did the most refreshing of things, she allowed him to age naturally. What we often forget is was what a good satirist she was too.

This book steals the format from her other creation, Adrian Mole. This is the secret diary of Margaret Hilda Roberts, aged 14¼, living above her father’s grocer's shop in Grantham. This is Margaret Thatcher as a girl, long before she met and married Denis.

Here Sue Townsend presents all the character tropes that Thatcher was renowned for – the workaholic, surviving on two hours’ sleep a night, the disdain for the working class, the distrust of the BBC and the inability to see the benefit of art – and she presents them in the character of a fourteen-year-old girl. This makes them seem absurd and very strange. Sue Townsend subtly questions these qualities, are they really positive characteristics?

This book is also populated with caricatures of political figures from the same time. They are broad caricatures and often presented as other children in Margaret Hilda Roberts’s life, but the in-joke of recognising the real politicians just adds to the fun. This book is fun too, Sue Townsend’s wonderful sense of humour is plainly on display here and her jokes hit the mark (more than once I laughed out loud).

The only problem with this book is that it’s so short and ended too soon.

Find it here on Amazon