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50 free Dylan Thomas trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Dylan Thomas trivia quiz follows the Welsh poet from 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in Swansea to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village. It covers his schoolteacher father who chose the name from The Mabinogion, the mile race he won at grammar school, the plagiarised poems in the school magazine, the reporter's job on the South Wales Daily Post, the Kardomah Gang, the Sunday Referee prize that produced 18 Poems, and the drunken proposal to Caitlin Macnamara in a London pub. The second half moves through the wartime film scripts and BBC broadcasts, New Quay and Fern Hill, the Boat House at Laugharne and the garage he turned into a writing shed, the villanelle written for his dying father, the play first called The Town That Was Mad and then Llareggub, the Stravinsky opera that never happened, the four American tours, the eighteen straight whiskies he claimed at the White Horse, the doctor's morphine and the coma at St Vincent's, and the churchyard at Laugharne where he was buried. It ends with Richard Burton, the Poets' Corner plaque and the prize that bears his name. Questions range from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article on Dylan Thomas.
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Q 01In which Welsh city was Dylan Thomas born on 27 October 1914?
Swansea
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.
Q 02From which collection of Welsh tales did Dylan Thomas's father take his son's first name?
The Mabinogion
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'.
Q 03What was the profession of Dylan Thomas's father, Jack?
Grammar-school English teacher
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.
Q 04What sporting triumph did 13-year-old Dylan Thomas achieve in June 1928, keeping the photo for life?
He won the mile race
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.
Q 05For which newspaper did the 16-year-old Dylan Thomas work as a reporter after leaving school in 1931?
The South Wales Daily Post
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.
Q 06What was Thomas's café circle of young writers, artists and musicians called?
The Kardomah Gang
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.
Q 07Which 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
'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.
Q 08Which newspaper's 'Poet's Corner' prize led to Dylan Thomas's first book, 18 Poems, in 1934?
The Sunday Referee
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'.
Q 09How did Dylan Thomas describe the New Apocalyptics, poets who took him as their 'poetic herald'?
'Intellectual muckpots leaning on a theory'
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.
Q 10In which London pub did Dylan Thomas meet Caitlin Macnamara in 1936 and drunkenly propose?
The Wheatsheaf
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.
Q 11What had Caitlin Macnamara done at 18 before meeting Thomas?
Joined the chorus line at the London Palladium
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'.
Q 12What were the names of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas's three children?
Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm
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.
Q 13Which Carmarthenshire town, 'the strangest town in Wales', was Thomas's final home?
Q 21Where did Dylan Thomas first perform a solo 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood, on 3 May 1953?
Harvard University
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.
Q 22Which composer discussed an opera with Dylan Thomas as librettist, on love and language after the bomb?
Igor Stravinsky
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.
Q 23Which American poet organised Dylan Thomas's US tours and wrote Dylan Thomas in America?
Laugharne
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.
Q 14Who bought the Boat House for the Thomas family in 1949, for £2,500?
Margaret Taylor, A. J. P. Taylor's wife
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.
Q 15What did Dylan Thomas convert into his writing shed on a cliff ledge near the Boat House?
A garage
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.
Q 16Which pub in his home village was Thomas's local, opposite the house he rented for his parents?
Brown's
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.
Q 17The 1945 poem 'Fern Hill' evokes which place from Thomas's childhood summers?
His aunt Ann Jones's farm near Llangain
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'.
Q 18In what poetic form is 'Do not go gentle into that good night', written for Thomas's dying father?
A villanelle
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.
Q 19What was Under Milk Wood's working title when Allen Curnow first saw a draft in the writing shed?
The Town That Was Mad
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.
Q 20How does Dylan Thomas describe Under Milk Wood's genre?
A play for voices
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.
John Brinnin
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'.
Q 24Roughly how many venues did Dylan Thomas's first American tour cover in early 1950?
About 40
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.
Q 25In which Greenwich Village pub did Dylan Thomas do much of his drinking in his final days?
The White Horse Tavern
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.
Q 26How many 'straight whiskies' did Dylan Thomas claim to have drunk on 3 November 1953?
Eighteen
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.
Q 27Where in New York was Dylan Thomas staying during his fatal final visit?
The Chelsea
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.
Q 28Which doctor gave Dylan Thomas cortisone, ACTH and morphine in New York and is widely criticised for misdiagnosing him?
Milton Feltenstein
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.
Q 29To which New York hospital was the comatose Dylan Thomas admitted at 1:58 am on 5 November 1953?
St Vincent's
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?'
Q 30What three causes of death did the pathologist record at Dylan Thomas's post-mortem?
Pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver
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.