Wendy Cope on hating school, meeting Billy Graham and enduring Freudian analysis

A surprise! I took this book from its envelope expecting a fresh collection of Wendy Cope’s poems, and opened it to find prose — a variety of memoirs, reflections, articles and letters. There are literary pieces on poets such as Anne Sexton and George Herbert, and her reviews from The Spectator when she was television critic here. She has been very keen on Molesworth since reading Down with Skool at 11, and thinks that it is salutary for a poet to be aware of the Fotherington-Thomas effect: ‘When I notice myself sounding like him, I try again’ — an excellent piece of advice for any poet to follow.

The first part of the book is largely autobiographical. Her father was Fred Cope, chairman and managing director of Mitchells, a department store, and her mother was his second wife, and much younger. Wendy’s relationship with her mother was difficult, and at seven she was sent away to boarding school (‘I didn’t cry, because girls in books don’t cry’).