text: Sue Townsend, author of the bestselling Adrian Mole books, left £1,106,163 in her will. The novelist, who died aged 68 in April last year, achieved huge success with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 133⁄4, when it was published in 1982. The book, which told of the life and loves of an angst-ridden teenager, was followed by seven sequels, selling in total more than eight million copies. Died last year: Sue Townsend, author of the bestselling Adrian Mole books, left £1,106,163 in her will . Probate records released last week reveal that Ms Townsend left the bulk of her estate in trust, with her second husband Colin Broadway and her four children named as beneficiaries. She also left £10,000 to Freedom From Torture, legacies of £10,000 each to her two sisters, and £1,000 each to 14 cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts and an uncle. Born in Leicester in 1946, Townsend left school at the age of 15, married at 18, and by 23 was a single parent with three children, a biography from her publisher, Penguin, said. After writing in secret for 20 years while working as a factory worker, shop assistant and youth worker, she eventually joined a writers' group at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester when she was in her 30s. At 35 she won the Thames Playwright Award for her play, Womberang, and a year later published the first in her series about Adrian Mole, which she had begun writing in 1975 while living on a Leicester housing estate. The book, which told of the life and loves of an angst-ridden teenager, was followed by seven sequels, selling in total more than eight million copies .
target: Novelist, who died last year, had huge success with Adrian Mole books .
  The eight-book series sold more than eight million copies worldwide .
  She left the bulk of her estate to her second husband Colin Broadway .