Wendy Cope was educated at Farringtons School, Chislehurst, London and then, after finishing university at St Hildas College, Oxford, she worked for 15 years as a primary school teacher in London.

In 1981, she became Arts and Reviews editor for the Inner London Education Authority magazine, Contact. Five years later she became a freelance writer and was a television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.

Her first published work Across the City was in a limited edition, published by the Priapus Press in 1980 and her first commercial book of poetry was Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis in 1986. Since then she has published two further books of poetry and has edited various anthologies of comic verse.

In 1987 she received a Cholmondeley Award for poetry and in 1995 the American Academy of Arts and Letters Michael Braude Award for light verse. In 2007 she was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize.

In 1998 she was the BBC Radio 4 listeners choice to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate and when Andrew Motions term of office ended in 2009 she was once again considered as a replacement.

She was awarded the OBE in the Queens 2010 Birthday Honours List.

Gerry Wolstenholme
February 2011