Robert Frost tops the 10 most broadcast poems on BBC radio’s poetry request show, Poetry Please, with Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Edward Thomas close behind. The revelation comes in advance of publication of an anthology  that includes those most popular poems on the BBC show. Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is number one. Others on the list include ‘Adlestrop’ by Edward Thomas, ‘Fern Hill’ (Dylan Thomas), Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’, and Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’, which is apparently also a favourite of education secretary Michael Gove. 

BBC Radio 4's Poetry Please, currently hosted by Roger McGough, was first aired in 1979, and broadcasts to two million listeners a week. Writing in the Guardian,  the show’s producer, Tim Dee, paid tribute to the enduring popularity of the poems in the top 10, and added: “Spare me the angry performance poet who thinks their shouty rhymes are fluttering poetry's dovecote and are relevant in a way Donne cannot be.”

Here is the top 10: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost; 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways', Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Adlestrop, Edward Thomas; Fern Hil, Dylan Thomas; The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy; Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold; 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds', William Shakespeare; The Listeners, Walter De La Mare; Remember, Christina Rossetti; To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell.

Poetry Please is published by Faber and Faber on 3 October, National Poetry Day.