Relatives of Dylan Thomas are heading to Swansea for a special tribute to his daughter.  The production in honour of  Aeronwy Thomas Ellis, who died in July, has been penned by her son, Huw Ellis, and will be performed in front of an audience which will include many of  Dylan’s descendants.

Huw said:

“Obviously losing my mother was an emotional time for me.”

“After signing her death certificate, I stepped out of Lambeth Town Hall into the busy streets of Brixton, with its roadworks and cars.”

“I thought this is not the kind of place where she should have her final send off.”

“Laugharne was her fanourite place, which is where her ashes will be scattered.”

The production,  The Dylan Thomas Bloodline, takes place at the Dylan Thomas Centre next weekend.

The Dylan Thomas Centre

Photo by Lilo Lil

Dylan Thomas Family Tree

Click on the Family Tree to see larger diagram

In the spring of 1936, Dylan met Caitlin Macnamara, a dancer.  They met in the Wheatsheaf public house in London’s West End.  They were introduced by Augustus John,  Caitlin’s lover at the time (there were rumours that the relationship continued with John after she married Thomas).  They married on 11 July 1937,  their first child was born on the 30 January 1939, a boy they named Llewelyn Edouard Thomas (2000).  He was followed on 3 March 1943 by a daughter Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis (died in 2009).   A second son, Colm Garan Hart, was born on 24 July 1949.   The marriage was tempestuous affair with rumours of affairs on both sides.   In 2004, Thomas’s love letters to Caitlin were  auctioned: Jay Leno owns some of them.

Brown’s Hotel was Dylan Thomas’ favourite drinking haunt.   It is soon to get a new life as a hotel and conference centre.  Brown’s in King Street in Laugharne, (a 257-year-old-listed-building) attracts Dylan Thomas fans from  across the globe.

Famous names include, ex US President Jimmy Carter, Pierce Brosnan and Mick Jagger.   In 1972 Brown’s regulars included, Richard Burton, Elisabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole and Sian Phillips who were making the film of Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood.  The aim of the new hotel is to give Thomas fans a chance to stay at Browns.   Swansea born Thomas made himself at home in the ancient hostelry in the 1930′s when he and Caitlin brought up  their  children in the towns estuary-side boathouse.

Former landlord Tommy Watts sold Browns to Men Behaving Badly actor Neil Morrissey in 2004 for £650,000.   “Everyone in Laugharne at the time Thomas lived there believed Under Milk Wood was based on what they said in the bar.”

Sales ranks of Dylan Thomas publications

 This graph shows the current sales rank of Dylan Thomas publications sold at  Amazon.co.uk. The publications which are showing the least rank are the best selling, the higher rank are the least selling.  For example, “Under Milk Wood” ranks 1,724 and therefore sells more than “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” which ranks at 83,272.

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In the poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” , Dylan expresses the  connection with nature and the body. In death the soul is liberated into nature and gods dominion.

“And death shall have no dominion.
Dead mean naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.”

Below is an interesting video of this poem set to the music of Sigur Ros.

Date

	Event
December 1925	Dylan published his first poem in his school magazine
April  27 1930	Dylan begins to write the first of his poetry in his note book
August 1933	He visited London for the first time
November 18 1934	Dylan published his first volume of 18 poems
September 10 1936	Dylan published his second volume of 25 poems
April 21 1937	Dylan  makes his first radio broadcast “Life And The Modern Poet”
October 1940	He starts to writing film scripts for The Stand Film Company
February 20 1950	Dylan starts his first  lecture tour of America
January 15 1952	Dylan and Caitlin  start on his second tour to America
November 10 1952	Collected Poems written 1934-1952 are published in Britain
December 16 1952	His father David died aged 76
April 1953	He visited America for his third tour

Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on the 27 of October 1914, Dylan’s middle name originated from his father’s uncle, he also wrote poetry in Welsh and used the name Gwilym Marles.

The name Marlais came from the stream “Marlais” near Brechfa, where his uncle William Thomas was born, the name was called “Marless”.

 

Under Milk Wood , published in 1954, is probably Dylan’s most famous work.  It was adapted for radio, stage and film. The play was first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme two months after his death. The film version ,directed by Andrew Sinclair, which starred Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter O’Toole and a cast of many well known actors was released in 1972.

Since then numerous adaptations have been made including the 1988 album which featured Anthony Hopkins as the ‘first voice’, with music by Elton John. This culminated in a one off stage show for the Princes Trust, entitled “An Evening with Dylan Thomas”. The cast included Catherine Zeta Jones, Harry Secombe, Sian Phillips, Tom Jones and an array of other stars.

In 2003, the BBC broadcast a new adaptation of the play, combining the original ‘first voice’ of Richard Burton with a cast of new actors. This was to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Dylan’s death.

“Somebody’s boring me; I think it’s me”

“The function of posterity is to look after itself.”

“An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night.”

“He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest.”

“I’ve just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s the record.”

“Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.”

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

“When one burns one’s bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”

“Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn’t do to upset one’s own vanity.”

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.”

“Wales is the land of my fathers. And my fathers can have it.”

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not.”

“I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

“The function of posterity is to look after itself.”

“Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.”

“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”

“I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics, we know all the lust and lavortory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”

“To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”