50 Fun Facts About Dylan Thomas

In which Welsh city was Dylan Thomas born on 27 October 1914?

Dylan Thomas was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in the Uplands district of Swansea and kept the house as his base until the family sold it in 1937, writing much of his early poetry in his bedroom there.

From which collection of Welsh tales did Dylan Thomas's father take his son's first name?

The Mabinogion includes Dylan ail Don, a sea figure, so the name is often glossed 'son of the wave'; his mother feared the Welsh pronunciation 'Dullan' would get him teased as 'the dull one'.

What was the profession of Dylan Thomas's father, Jack?

Jack (D. J.) Thomas was a Grammar-school English teacher, senior English master at the boys' grammar school his son later attended; he held a first-class English degree from Aberystwyth and taught Welsh at evening classes.

What sporting triumph did 13-year-old Dylan Thomas achieve in June 1928, keeping the photo for life?

He won the mile race at the school sports in June 1928, and the local newspaper's photograph of the win stayed in his wallet for life, though he otherwise shunned games for drama and the school magazine.

For which newspaper did the 16-year-old Dylan Thomas work as a reporter after leaving school in 1931?

Thomas joined The South Wales Daily Post as a junior reporter in 1931 and lasted about 18 months before leaving to freelance, filling his notebooks with the poems that became his first two books.

What was Thomas's café circle of young writers, artists and musicians called?

The Kardomah Gang met at the Kardomah Café in Castle Street and included the painter Alfred Janes and the journalist Charles Fisher; the café was destroyed in the Three Nights' Blitz of February 1941.

Which poem, published in the New English Weekly in May 1933, was Dylan Thomas's first in a national journal?

'And death shall have no dominion' appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933, when Thomas was 18; 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower' and 'Before I Knocked' followed later that year.

Which newspaper's 'Poet's Corner' prize led to Dylan Thomas's first book, 18 Poems, in 1934?

Fortune Press, partly a vanity publisher, printed it; critic Desmond Hawkins called it 'the sort of bomb that bursts no more than once in three years'.

How did Dylan Thomas describe the New Apocalyptics, poets who took him as their 'poetic herald'?

Thomas dismissed the New Apocalyptics as 'Intellectual muckpots leaning on a theory' and refused to sign their manifesto, though Henry Treece and J. F. Hendry modelled their work on his.

In which London pub did Dylan Thomas meet Caitlin Macnamara in 1936 and drunkenly propose?

They met at The Wheatsheaf in Fitzrovia in April 1936, introduced by the painter Augustus John, her lover at the time, and married at Penzance register office on 11 July 1937.

What had Caitlin Macnamara done at 18 before meeting Thomas?

Joined the chorus line at the London Palladium at 18 — that was Caitlin, a dancer of Irish and French descent, whose memoir later called their marriage 'not only a love story, it was a drink story'.

What were the names of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas's three children?

Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm were born in 1939, 1943 and 1949; Aeronwy is thought to be named after the River Aeron, near Plas Gelli in Cardiganshire where the family lodged during the war.

Which Carmarthenshire town, 'the strangest town in Wales', was Thomas's final home?

Thomas first visited Laugharne in May 1934, moved there in 1938 and returned to the Boat House in 1949; he is buried in St Martin's churchyard under a plain white wooden cross.

Who bought the Boat House for the Thomas family in 1949, for £2,500?

Margaret Taylor, A. J. P. Taylor's wife, had already housed them in a summerhouse at her Oxford home and at the Manor House, South Leigh, and in 1951 bought them a house in Delancey Street, Camden Town.

What did Dylan Thomas convert into his writing shed on a cliff ledge near the Boat House?

A garage on the cliff path above the Boat House became the writing shed where he worked on his last poems; a touring replica was a highlight of the 2014 centenary and the original is preserved by Carmarthenshire County Council.

Which pub in his home village was Thomas's local, opposite the house he rented for his parents?

Brown's Hotel on King Street was his local, facing the Pelican, the house he rented for his parents; his wake was held at Brown's after the funeral on 24 November 1953.

The 1945 poem 'Fern Hill' evokes which place from Thomas's childhood summers?

His aunt Ann Jones's farm near Llangain, the dilapidated 15-acre Fernhill, gave the poem its name; the same place is drawn far more bleakly in his short story 'The Peaches'.

In what poetic form is 'Do not go gentle into that good night', written for Thomas's dying father?

A villanelle of nineteen lines in five tercets and a closing quatrain on two rhymes, it first appeared in the Rome journal Botteghe Oscure in 1951, written as his father's health failed.

What was Under Milk Wood's working title when Allen Curnow first saw a draft in the writing shed?

The Town That Was Mad was the title on the draft Curnow saw; a half-version appeared in Botteghe Oscure in 1952 as 'Llareggub, A Piece for Radio Perhaps' before his American agent warned the title would not sell.

How does Dylan Thomas describe Under Milk Wood's genre?

Thomas subtitled Under Milk Wood 'A play for voices': written for radio, two narrators guide listeners through a night and day in the fictional Llareggub, and the BBC first broadcast it in January 1954.

Where did Dylan Thomas first perform a solo 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood, on 3 May 1953?

At Harvard University on 3 May 1953 he read a solo 'work in progress' version; the first full-cast performance followed at New York's Poetry Center on 14 May, with the final lines handed to actors as they made up.

Which composer discussed an opera with Dylan Thomas as librettist, on love and language after the bomb?

Igor Stravinsky met Thomas in Boston in May 1953 to plan an opera about the rediscovery of love and language after a nuclear catastrophe; the project died with the poet, and Stravinsky wrote In Memoriam Dylan Thomas in 1954.

Which American poet organised Dylan Thomas's US tours and wrote Dylan Thomas in America?

John Brinnin, director of the Poetry Center in New York, arranged all four tours; his 1955 memoir Dylan Thomas in America fixed the image of a 'roistering, drunken and doomed poet'.

Roughly how many venues did Dylan Thomas's first American tour cover in early 1950?

About 40 venues in three months: it opened before a thousand people at the Kaufmann Auditorium of the Poetry Center in New York on 23 February 1950 and ran into May, mostly college readings.

In which Greenwich Village pub did Dylan Thomas do much of his drinking in his final days?

The White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street was his haunt; after a session there on 3 November he returned to his hotel boasting of a record number of straight whiskies, though the barman said it was at most half that.

How many 'straight whiskies' did Dylan Thomas claim to have drunk on 3 November 1953?

Eighteen straight whiskies — 'I think that's the record!' — was his boast to Liz Reitell on returning to his hotel on 3 November 1953; the pub's barman and owner later said he could not have managed more than half that.

Where in New York was Dylan Thomas staying during his fatal final visit?

The Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street is where Liz Reitell checked him in on 20 October 1953, shocked at how pale and shaky he looked; he was carried from it in a coma on 5 November.

Which doctor gave Dylan Thomas cortisone, ACTH and morphine in New York and is widely criticised for misdiagnosing him?

Milton Feltenstein diagnosed delirium tremens and on 4 November injected half a grain of morphine; later critics, including the hospital's neurosurgeon, said the greater failure was not admitting Thomas to hospital far sooner.

To which New York hospital was the comatose Dylan Thomas admitted at 1:58 am on 5 November 1953?

St Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village admitted him in a coma at 1:58 am on 5 November 1953; Caitlin flew in from Britain within days, and her first words are reported as 'Is the bloody man dead yet?'

What three causes of death did the pathologist record at Dylan Thomas's post-mortem?

Pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver were the three causes the pathologist recorded; the liver showed no cirrhosis, despite rumours that he had drunk himself to death.

How old was Dylan Thomas when he died in New York on 9 November 1953?

He was 39: born on 27 October 1914, he died less than a fortnight after his thirty-ninth birthday, part-way through his fourth American reading tour.

Which Welsh actor starred in the first BBC broadcast of Under Milk Wood in 1954?

Richard Burton spoke First Voice in the BBC Third Programme broadcast of 25 January 1954, which won that year's Prix Italia; he returned to the part in the 1972 film alongside Elizabeth Taylor.

Which award did Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems 1934-1952 win on publication in November 1952?

Collected Poems 1934-1952 won The Foyle poetry prize, awarded early in 1953, after Philip Toynbee in the Observer had hailed its 38-year-old author as 'the greatest living poet in the English language'.

For which outfit did Dylan Thomas write wartime documentary scripts?

The Strand Film Company, run by Donald Taylor, hired him in 1941 to script Ministry of Information documentaries such as This Is Colour, New Towns for Old and Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain.

Which medical grade kept Dylan Thomas among the last to be called up in the Second World War?

He had bronchitis and asthma from childhood and coughed up blood; his BBC and film work was later counted as essential war work.

In which Cardiganshire seaside village did Dylan Thomas rent the bungalow Majoda in 1944-45?

New Quay is where he rented Majoda, a wood-and-asbestos bungalow above the bay, from September 1944; in March 1945 a neighbour, Captain William Killick, fired a Sten gun into it during a drunken row.

In which country did Dylan Thomas spend January 1951 researching an oil-company documentary?

Iran: in January 1951 he visited Abadan and Tehran to script a documentary for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a job he loathed; his letters to Caitlin dwell on the poverty he saw.

What was unveiled for Dylan Thomas in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, in 1982?

A plaque quoting the last lines of 'Fern Hill' ('Time held me green and dying / Though I sang in my chains like the sea') was unveiled in Poets' Corner on St David's Day, 1 March 1982.

When the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in 2004, to whom was it to be awarded?

The best writer in English under 30 was its original target: founded in 2004 and awarded for the initial time in 2006 to Rachel Trezise for Fresh Apples, the prize later lifted its age ceiling.

Which prose collection of 1940 contains stories based on Thomas's own youthful romances in Wales?

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, published by Dent in 1940, puns on Joyce's title; its ten stories draw on his own boyhood and youth, and its poor sales left him hounded by creditors.

Which 1940 satire co-written with John Davenport went unpublished until 1976 for fear of libel?

The Death of the King's Canary, a spoof of the poetry world written with John Davenport at his Marshfield house in summer 1940, stayed unpublished until 1976 because its caricatures of living writers invited libel suits.

Which 2014 film about Thomas's first US tour starred Celyn Jones and Elijah Wood?

Set Fire to the Stars, shot in black and white, casts Celyn Jones as the poet and Elijah Wood as the American academic who hosted his 1950 tour; it opened in the centenary year of his birth.

Which actor played Dylan Thomas opposite Sienna Miller's Caitlin in the 2008 film The Edge of Love?

Matthew Rhys played the poet in The Edge of Love (2008), directed by John Maybury, opposite Keira Knightley as his childhood friend Vera Phillips and Cillian Murphy as her soldier husband.

Which future composer helped the teenage Thomas set up the 'Warmley Broadcasting Corporation'?

Daniel Jones, the schoolfriend who became a symphonist and edited the poet's collected verse, hosted the mock broadcasts at Warmley, his family home in Sketty; he later served as a trustee of the estate.

With which Mumbles-based amateur drama company did the young Dylan Thomas act in the early 1930s?

The Little Theatre, the amateur company then housed in a church hall at Mumbles, cast him in Coward's Hay Fever and Congreve's The Way of the World before he left in 1934.

In which city did Thomas outline an early Under Milk Wood at a party in March 1949?

In Prague, a guest of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union in March 1949, he sketched for his interpreter Jiřina Hauková a play about a Welsh seaside town, with an organist playing to sheep and a baker with two wives.

Which novelist, despite his low opinion of Thomas, became a trustee of the poet's estate?

Kingsley Amis, who had mocked the poet's work in print, nonetheless served for years as a trustee of the Dylan Thomas copyright trust, which shared royalties among the widow and the children.

Who wrote Dylan Thomas's obituary in The Times?

Vernon Watkins, the poet and bank clerk who had been his closest literary friend since 1935, wrote the unsigned Times obituary; Thomas had famously failed to appear as best man at Watkins's 1944 wedding.

'Land of my fathers, and my fathers can keep it' is a line from which 1948 film Thomas scripted?

The Three Weird Sisters (1948), a Gothic melodrama set in a Welsh mining village that Thomas co-scripted, gives the line to the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan; it is often misquoted as the poet's own verdict on Wales.

Which sculptor made the 1984 seated bronze of Dylan Thomas in the Maritime Quarter?

John Doubleday's seated bronze of the poet, unveiled in 1984 in what became Dylan Thomas Square, stands beside the Dylan Thomas Theatre; Doubleday also made the Charlie Chaplin statue in London's Leicester Square.