The poetry of Kent-born Cope has charmed readers ever since her first collection, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis. In Family Values, she gives it to us straight with verse about religion, childhood and death, all imbued with her trademark wit and honesty. And there are a few life lessons here for friends and relatives: in ‘My Funeral’, she wants no one to overstay their welcome when delivering an elegy while ‘Another Valentine’ aims a slingshot at the forced romanticism of one day in February.