If your Mum likes a chuckle then she might enjoy one of our new library additions.

Wendy Cope’s first new collection of poems in a decade, Family Values (Catalogue no. 8937), displays her customary wit and humour.  As reviewer Kate Kellaway noted in ‘The Observer’ (Sunday 15th May, 2011) “Wendy Cope’s best poems have the quality of deadpan jokes you want to pass on."

Wendy studied history at Oxford University and spent 15 years as a primary school teacher before becoming a professional writer. She even did a stint as a television columnist for the Spectator magazine in the same year her first anthology, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, was published.

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. She was also shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Poetry Award, voted top choice for poet laureate by BBC Radio Four listeners and was awarded an OBE in 2010.

If you enjoy poetry do browse our wide selection of titles ranging from humorous verse to famous classics.