The Nation's Favourite Poems

By: BBC Audiobooks

Narrated by: John Nettles, Siobhan Redmond, Greg Wise, Emma Fielding

Forty-five of Britain's best-loved poems, read by John Nettles, Siobhan Redmond, Greg Wise and Emma Fielding.

In a national poll conducted to discover Britain's favourite poem, Rudyard Kipling's 'If -' was voted number one. This unique anthology brings together over forty poems from the poll, including the top ten.

Here is poignant war poetry (Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', Rupert Brooke's 'The Soldier' and Siegfried Sassoon's 'Everyone Sang' ); romantic verse such as Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' and W. B. Yeats' 'When You Are Old'; Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear's great nonsense poems 'Jabberwocky' and 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat', and much more. Classics such as Wordsworth's 'The Daffodils' and Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shallot' sit alongside contemporary poetry like Allan Ahlberg's 'Please Mrs Butler' and Wendy Cope's 'Bloody Men'.

Superbly read by John Nettles, Siobhan Redmond, Greg Wise and Emma Fielding, this popular collection includes many of the very best examples of British verse, as chosen by poetry lovers nationwide.

The poems included in this collection are:

1 'If -' by Rudyard Kipling, read by John Nettles
2 'The Lady of Shallot' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, read by Siobhan Redmond
3 'The Listeners' by Walter de la Mare, read by Greg Wise
4 'Not Waving but Drowning' by Stevie Smith, read by Siobhan Redmond
5 'The Daffodils' by William Wordsworth, read by John Nettles
6 'To Autumn' by John Keats, read by Siobhan Redmond
7 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' by William Butler Yeats, read by Emma Fielding
8 'Dulce et Decorum Est' by Wilfred Owen, read by Greg Wise
9 'Ode to a Nightingale' by John Keats, read by Siobhan Redmond
10 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by William Butler Yeats, read by John Nettles
11 'Remember' by Christina Rossetti, read by Siobhan Redmond
12 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray, read by John Nettles
13 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas, read by John Nettles
14 'Leisure' by William Henry Davies, read by Emma Fielding
15 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes, read by Greg Wise
16 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, read by Greg Wise
17 'Dover Beach' by Matthew Arnold, read by John Nettles
18 'The Tyger' by William Blake, read by John Nettles
19 'Adlestrop' by Edward Thomas, read by Siobhan Redmond
20 'The Soldier' by Rupert Brooke, read by Greg Wise
21 'Sea-Fever' by John Masefield, read by John Nettles
22 'Upon Westminster Bridge' by William Wordsworth, read by Greg Wise
23 'How Do I Love Thee?' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read by Emma Fielding
24 'Cargoes' by John Masefield, read by Greg Wise
25 'Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll, read by Emma Fielding
26 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by John Nettles
27 'Ozymandias of Egypt' by Percy Bysshe Shelley, read by Greg Wise
28 'Abou ben Adhem' by Leigh Hunt, read by John Nettles
29 'Everyone Sang' by Siegfried Sassoon, read by Greg Wise
30 'The Windhover' by Gerard Manley Hopkins, read by Siobhan Redmond
31 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas, read by John Nettles
32 'Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' by William Shakespeare, read by Siobhan Redmond
33 'When You Are Old' by William Butler Yeats, read by Emma Fielding
34 'Lessons of the War (To Alan Mitchell): Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed, read by John Nettles
35 'The Darkling Thrush' by Thomas Hardy, read by Emma Fielding
36 'Please Mrs Butler' by Allan Ahlberg, read by Emma Fielding
37 'Kubla Khan' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, read by John Nettles
38 'Home-Thoughts, from Abroad' by Robert Browning, read by Greg Wise
39 'High Flight (An Airman's Ecstasy)' by John Gillespie Magee, read by Greg Wise
40 'The Owl and the Pussy-Cat' by Edward Lear, read by Emma Fielding
41 'The Glory of the Garden' by Rudyard Kipling, read by Greg Wise
42 'The Road Not Taken' by Robert Frost, read by Siobhan Redmond
43 'The Way through the Woods' by Rudyard Kipling, read by Emma Fielding
44 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' by Wilfred Owen, read by Greg Wise
45 'Bloody Men' by Wendy Cope, read by Siobhan Redmond

©1998 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)1998 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Excellent selection of poems but let down by poor editing

Overall one of the better audible collections of popular poems with the majority being very well read. That being said, the overemphasised meter and slightly breathy, lilting style of some was too distracting from the natural cadence and detracted from the message a little.

The editing is terrible. The music can overlap with the readings erratically and can have a jarringly contrasting tone to the poem, some introductions for the poems are inserted after they have begun and the start of each poem can be difficult to find because the starting point is approximated. Clearly done in haste, but while these could be considered a few small quirks they do make the collection less easy to use and will prevent these beautiful stories from being enjoyed by the widest audience possible. Some very good work, and in the main enjoyable to listen to.

Love the poems from my school days and beyond!

What did you love best about The Nation's Favourite Poems?

I remember when they were voted for and have to concur with the number one and most of my favourites were way up there.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

John Nettles performing "If" was very moving.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Poetry is very moving and I had to read a lot of it at school so it was great to hear it again, I have the full tapes but having this abridged version for my Kindle is great.

Any additional comments?

Its often hard to get stuff from my home country on Kindle so this was a nice surprise. I would love to see more stuff available for Kindle. Real copies are so yesterday, actually I have no more room to store them!

excellent reading of classic poems with caveat

Truly excellent readings of classic British poems, however liberally bracketed with very irritating music. At some point after I purchased, the publishers added proper chapter breaks and titles. Unfortunately, they got at least one of them very wrong (e.g. ‘driving’ instead of ‘drowning’ - accidental dark humor at its best).

Bizarre musical background to poems...

The poems are truly wonderful but some idiot has inserted musical clips between the poems that seem to have been taken from a cell phone menu or a children’s television show. The music is louder than the poems- and repeats the same tunes randomly. I have to pull my headphones out after each poem.