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.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Welsh city was Dylan Thomas born on 27 October 1914?
Swansea
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.
Q 02From which collection of Welsh tales did Dylan Thomas's father take his son's first name?
The Mabinogion
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'.
Q 03What was the profession of Dylan Thomas's father, Jack?
Grammar-school English teacher
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.
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 otherwise shied away from the curriculum, preferring drama and editing 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
He lasted about 18 months, then freelanced while filling notebooks with more than 200 poems between 1930 and 1935.
Q 06What was Thomas's café circle of young writers, artists and musicians called?
The Kardomah Gang
It included poet Vernon Watkins and composer Daniel Jones; the Kardomah Café was destroyed in the Three Nights' Blitz of 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
He was 18; 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower' and 'Before I Knocked' also date from his teens.
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'
He refused to sign their manifesto, though Henry Treece and others modelled their work on his.
Q 10In which London pub did Dylan Thomas meet Caitlin Macnamara in 1936 and drunkenly propose?
The Wheatsheaf
They were 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
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'.
Q 12What were the names of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas's three children?
Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm
Aeronwy is thought to be named after the River Aeron, near Plas Gelli where the family lived during the war.
Q 13Which Carmarthenshire town, 'the strangest town in Wales', was Thomas's final home?
Laugharne
Q 21Where did Dylan Thomas first perform a solo 'work in progress' version of Under Milk Wood, on 3 May 1953?
Harvard University
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.
Q 22Which composer discussed an opera with Dylan Thomas as librettist, on love and language after the bomb?
Igor Stravinsky
W. H. Auden had introduced Stravinsky to Thomas's poetry; the project died with the poet in November 1953.
Q 23Which American poet organised Dylan Thomas's US tours and wrote Dylan Thomas in America?
John Brinnin
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.
Q 14Who bought the Boat House for the Thomas family in 1949, for £2,500?
Margaret Taylor, A. J. P. Taylor's wife
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.
Q 15What did Dylan Thomas convert into his writing shed on a cliff ledge near the Boat House?
A garage
A touring replica of the shed was a highlight of the 2014 centenary; 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
His wake was held there 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
The dilapidated 15-acre farm is portrayed more accurately 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
It was published in 1951 alongside the ribald 'Lament'; both were called 'unusually blunt'.
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
A half-version was later printed as 'Llareggub. A Piece for Radio Perhaps' before John Brinnin said that title would not sell in America.
Q 20How does Dylan Thomas describe Under Milk Wood's genre?
A play for voices
The BBC only recorded it after his death; Richard Burton starred in the 1954 broadcast, which won the Prix Italia.
The 1955 book cemented Thomas's reputation as a 'roistering, drunken and doomed poet'; Brinnin did not attend the funeral.
Q 24Roughly how many venues did Dylan Thomas's first American tour cover in early 1950?
About 40
It opened before a thousand people at the Kaufmann Auditorium of New York's Poetry Center and lasted three months.
Q 25In which Greenwich Village pub did Dylan Thomas do much of his drinking in his final days?
The White Horse Tavern
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.
Q 26How many 'straight whiskies' did Dylan Thomas claim to have drunk on 3 November 1953?
Eighteen
'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.
Q 27Where in New York was Dylan Thomas staying during his fatal final visit?
The Chelsea
Liz Reitell had checked him in on 20 October 1953, shocked at how pale and shaky he looked.
Q 28Which doctor gave Dylan Thomas cortisone, ACTH and morphine in New York and is widely criticised for misdiagnosing him?
Milton Feltenstein
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'.
Q 29To which New York hospital was the comatose Dylan Thomas admitted at 1:58 am on 5 November 1953?
St Vincent's
Caitlin arrived from Britain the next morning; 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
His liver showed no sign of cirrhosis, despite rumours he had drunk himself to death.