Wendy Cope

Wendy Cope was born in Kent in 1945 and is a graduate in History from St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She trained and worked as a teacher, but became Arts and Reviews editor for ‘Contact’, the Inner London Education Authority magazine. She continued to teach part-time, until turning to full-time freelance writing in 1986. She was television critic for ‘The Spectator’ magazine until 1990.

The recipient of some major poetry awards,her notable poetry collections include ‘Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis’ (1986), ‘Serious Concerns’ (1992) and ‘If I Don’t Know’ (2001). The latter was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. ‘Two Cures for Love’ (2008) is a selection of previous poems with notes, together with new poems.

Wendy Cope is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Winchester. In 1998 she was the listeners' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. Her latest collection is Family Values (2011). She was awarded an OBE in 2010.