This highly accessible collection gathers together the best-loved gems of English language verse, from the deeply moving to the hilariously silly. The poems span the entire range of verse from high drama to stuff-and-nonsense and are presented in nine sections: Poems of Childhood and Youth; Poems of Love and Marriage; Poems of Life; Poems of Loss and Comfort; Poems of War and Peace; Poems to Read Aloud; Poems to Read Quietly; Poems of Animals and Nature and Poems of Magic and Mystery.

The anthology includes works by William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney, Robert Burns, T S Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, W B Yeats and many, many more. The poems have all been chosen and arranged by Neil Philip and the volume is illustrated throughout with watercolour borders and decorative motifs by Isabelle Brent, glowing with her trademark gold leaf.