Poet Wendy Cope was born in Erith, Kent in 1945 and read History at St Hilda's College, Oxford.  She trained as a teacher at Westminster College of Education, Oxford and taught in primary schools in London (1967-81 and 1984-6), before becoming a freelance writer in 1986.  Her poetry collections include Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986), Serious Concerns (1992) and If I Don't Know  (2001), which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Poetry Award.  She has edited a number of poetry anthologies and is also the author of two books for children, Twiddling Your Thumbs (1988) and The River Girl (1991).  Wendy is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Winchester, England.

Favourite books:  Persuasion by Jane Austen;  Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope; The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.  Among her favourite poets are George Herbert, AE Housman and Emily Dickinson