50 Fun Facts About Dylan Thomas

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

He was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in the Uplands and lived there until he was 23, writing half of all his poems in the house.

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

Dylan ail Don is a sea character, so the name can be translated 'son of the sea'; his mother feared the Welsh pronunciation would get him teased as 'the dull one'.

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

He had a first-class degree from Aberystwyth and taught Welsh at evening classes; his son later enrolled at the very school where he taught.

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

He otherwise shied away from the curriculum, preferring drama and editing the school magazine.

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

He lasted about 18 months, then freelanced while filling notebooks with more than 200 poems between 1930 and 1935.

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

It included poet Vernon Watkins and composer Daniel Jones; the Kardomah Café was destroyed in the Three Nights' Blitz of 1941.

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

He was 18; 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower' and 'Before I Knocked' also date from his teens.

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'?

He refused to sign their manifesto, though Henry Treece and others modelled their work on his.

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

They were 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?

She was a dancer of Irish and French Quaker descent; her memoir 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?

Aeronwy is thought to be named after the River Aeron, near Plas Gelli where the family lived during the war.

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

He first visited in May 1934, moved there in 1938 and returned to the Boat House in 1949; he is buried in St Martin's churchyard.

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

She had already housed them in the grounds of her Oxford home and in South Leigh, and later bought them a place in Camden Town.

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

A touring replica of the shed was a highlight of the 2014 centenary; 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?

His wake was held there after the funeral on 24 November 1953.

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

The dilapidated 15-acre farm is portrayed more accurately 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?

It was published in 1951 alongside the ribald 'Lament'; both were called 'unusually blunt'.

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

A half-version was later printed as 'Llareggub. A Piece for Radio Perhaps' before John Brinnin said that title would not sell in America.

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

The BBC only recorded it after his death; Richard Burton starred in the 1954 broadcast, which won the Prix Italia.

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

A full-cast performance followed a week later in New York, with the last lines handed to actors as they put on their make-up.

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

W. H. Auden had introduced Stravinsky to Thomas's poetry; the project died with the poet in November 1953.

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

The 1955 book cemented Thomas's reputation as a 'roistering, drunken and doomed poet'; Brinnin did not attend the funeral.

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

It opened before a thousand people at the Kaufmann Auditorium of New York's Poetry Center and lasted three months.

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

He returned from it to the Chelsea Hotel on 3 November declaring he had drunk eighteen 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?

'I think that's the record!' he added; the pub's barman and owner later said he could not have drunk more than half that.

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

Liz Reitell had checked him in on 20 October 1953, shocked at how pale and shaky he looked.

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

He diagnosed delirium tremens; the neurosurgeon at St Vincent's called his failure to hospitalise Thomas sooner 'even more culpable than his use of morphine'.

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

Caitlin arrived from Britain the next morning; 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?

His liver showed no sign of cirrhosis, despite rumours he had drunk himself to death.

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

Six friends from Laugharne carried his coffin, and Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.

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

He was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a later film version, and the broadcast won the 1954 Prix Italia.

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

Critic Philip Toynbee declared him 'the greatest living poet in the English language'; he was 38.

For which outfit did Dylan Thomas write wartime documentary scripts?

He wrote six scripts in 1942 alone, on subjects from aniline dyes to new towns, for the Ministry of Information.

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?

His first biographer called the nine months there 'a second flowering' that produced Fern Hill among other poems.

To which country did Dylan Thomas travel in 1951 to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company?

One scholar has speculated the assignment was undertaken on behalf of British intelligence; his letters home rage at the poverty he saw.

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

In 2014 he was also among ten people on the Royal Mail's 'Remarkable Lives' stamps.

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

The age limit was later raised to 39 and under. A separate Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award followed in 2005 at the Swansea Bay Film Festival.

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

Its title puns on Joyce; poor sales of it and The Map of Love left him borrowing heavily and hounded by creditors.

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

They wrote it at Davenport's home in Marshfield after creditors drove the Thomases out of Laugharne.

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

It came out in the centenary year, when Michael Sheen and Ian McKellen joined a 36-hour marathon reading of his work.

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

Rhys Ifans took the role in the 2017 film Dominion, with Romola Garai as Caitlin.

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

Jones walked arm in arm with Caitlin behind the coffin at Laugharne and later served as a trustee of the poet's estate.

With which Mumbles-based drama company did Thomas act, write and paint sets from 1929 to 1934?

Actor John Laurie thought he 'would have loved to have been an actor' and could have been the first real poet-dramatist since Shakespeare.

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

His interpreter Jiřina Hauková recalled him describing a town declared insane, an organist who played for sheep and a baker with two wives.

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

Thomas died intestate with assets of £100, but royalties were split between Caitlin and the three children under the trust.

Who wrote Dylan Thomas's obituary in The Times?

The fellow poet was a Kardomah Gang friend from Swansea days; the wake after the Laugharne funeral was held at Brown's Hotel.

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

Often attributed to the poet himself, it is spoken by Owen Morgan-Vaughan; Thomas disliked Welsh nationalism but denied any Welsh bardic influence.

Which sculptor's bronze statue of Thomas stands outside the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea?

A second memorial, a rock inscribed with the closing lines of 'Fern Hill' by Ronald Cour, sits in his childhood haunt Cwmdonkin Park.