At first, I thought this was going to be irredeemably terrible. It starts off very poorly, with a mixture of bland poems and some which are just outright crap. Sometimes, this crappiness is due to an indulgence of gibberish (see the poem 'Sumer is Icumen In' by an anonymous poet – presumably because he/she was ashamed of it) or charlatanism (the John Hegley poem 'Autumn Verses' starts with Autumn is strange stuff / anagram of Aunt mu / but not of nostalgia", whilst the Craig Raine poem 'The Onion, Memory' has the titular line "It is the onion, memory / that makes me cry", which would be laughed at if anyone tried to pass it off as solemn poetry today).

In general, however, it is the poor selection policy which makes this book underwhelming: there is an overemphasis on stereotypically 'English' poems, and consequently we are inundated with willowy descriptions of flowers, clouds, fields and suchlike, rather than useful or meaningful stuff that might entertain or challenge the reader. There's only so many times you can read of morning dew settling softly on a freshly-ploughed field or some other such nonsense before you start skipping verses.

However, I persevered and the book was largely redeemed by a number of strong choices. However, with a very few exceptions, these were poems which I was already familiar with. I didn't really gain anything from reading the book; the poems I enjoyed were mostly the refuge of familiarity from the shower of rubbish I was being exposed to. Consequently, despite a number of worthy poems from heavyweight poets, I can't really admire More Nation's Favourite Poems as an entity in and of itself." ( )