This was very much in a style popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and Jones was described by Edward Lucie-Smith in a 1970 anthology of post-war British poetry as "certainly one of the very best practitioners of this overworked vein".
[1] Subsequent critical assessments of his work have included the following: "Jones believes that poetry need not surrender to fiction all the stories that need telling, but his poems retain the tightness of verse and the authority of good cadences.
– Peter Porter "It is his concern with truth-telling that unifies Brian Jones’s work and gives The Island Normal its strength, a poetry austere without coldness and colloquial without slackness.
– Grevel Lindop "[Jones’s] leveller-like anger at England’s waste of human potential arises from a deep love of his inheritance and a real fear for its future.
– Peter Bland Two of Brian Jones's best-known children's poems are About Friends [1] and How to catch Tiddlers.