IT’S summer 2007 and Adrian Mole, one of Britain’s popular diarists, is now aged 39 and a quarter.

Things are looking bleak. He is living in a converted pigsty in the depressing little village of Mangold Parva, Leicestershire, next door to his parents.

His marriage to Daisy is in trouble, as is his job in a second-hand book shop. He’s worried about his son, Glenn, who’s fighting the Taliban, and his mum, Pauline, is appearing on The Jeremy Kyle Show and will take a DNA test to find out who’s the father of his sister, Rosie.

Adrian’s misery is complete when he is diagnosed with prostate cancer and begins treatment immediately, while Daisy gets a job as PR at Belvoir Hall and has a affair with Fairfax-Lycett. But things start to look up when Pandora Braithwaite, his first love, comes back in his life.

As with all the Adrian Mole books, this is laugh-out-loud funny, yet achingly poignant. The diagnosis and treatment of Mole’s cancer is sensitively written, and with the benefit of hindsight, author Sue Townsend has captured the feelings of that post-Blair, pre-recession era.

For Adrian, at least, the future looks optimistic. Out November 5.

Laura Wurzal