Dylan Thomas Trivia
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49 free Dylan Thomas trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
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 his parents moved out 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 tells of Dylan ail Don, a boy who makes for the sea at his baptism. In Welsh the name sounds like 'Dullan', but Thomas insisted on 'Dillan' and corrected BBC producers who said otherwise.
Q 03What was the profession of Dylan Thomas's father, Jack?
Grammar-school English teacher
Grammar-school English teacher Jack Thomas was senior English master at the school his son later attended, and read Shakespeare aloud to Dylan from infancy.
Q 04What sporting feat did Dylan Thomas pull off as a schoolboy, to his lifelong pride?
He won the mile race
He won the mile race at his school's sports day, and carried the local newspaper's photograph of his victory with him for the rest of his life.
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
The South Wales Daily Post took him on as a junior reporter, but he left within two years and made poetry his main work.
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 and included the artist Mervyn Levy and the journalist Charles Fisher. Bombs destroyed the café in 1941, and Thomas mourned it on radio as 'razed to the snow'.
Q 07Which newspaper's 'Poet's Corner' prize led to Dylan Thomas's first book, 18 Poems, in 1934?
The Sunday Referee
The Sunday Referee's Poet's Corner prize paid part of the cost of 18 Poems. The previous winner, Pamela Hansford Johnson, had written to him about a poem in the column and became his first serious girlfriend.
Q 08Which poets' group printed Dylan Thomas in its first anthology, though he refused to sign its manifesto?
The New Apocalyptics
The New Apocalyptics printed Thomas's work in their first anthology, but he would not sign their manifesto. Henry Treece, one of the group's leaders, still went on to publish a book-length study of him in 1949.
Q 09In which London pub did Dylan Thomas meet Caitlin Macnamara in 1936 and propose within hours?
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 10Caitlin Macnamara, Dylan Thomas's future wife, joined the chorus line of which West End theatre as a teenager?
The London Palladium
The London Palladium, where Caitlin was a chorus girl before dancing in Paris. She and Thomas later married penniless, against his parents' wishes.
Q 11What 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 12Which Carmarthenshire town, 'the strangest town in Wales', was Thomas's final home?
Laugharne
Laugharne struck him as strange because its people spoke with a broad English accent though Welsh country lay on every side. He made his last home at its Boat House in 1949 and is buried in its churchyard.
Q 13Who bought the Boat House for the Thomas family in 1949?
Q 21Which composer discussed an opera with Dylan Thomas as librettist, on love and language after the bomb?
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky agreed in 1953 to write an opera to Thomas's libretto and expected him at his California home to start work. Thomas died that November, and the composer wrote In Memoriam Dylan Thomas instead.
Q 22Which American poet organised Dylan Thomas's US tours and wrote Dylan Thomas in America?
John Brinnin
John Brinnin ran New York's Poetry Center and first brought Thomas to America in 1950. His candid memoir of the tours, published two years after the poet's death, painted him as a drunk and a philanderer.
Q 23Which Dylan Thomas story, recorded in 1952 to fill an LP's second side, is credited with launching America's audiobook industry?
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 14What did Dylan Thomas convert into his writing shed on a cliff ledge near the Boat House?
A garage
A garage, believed to have been built for the first motor car in the town, became the cliff-top shed where he wrote several late poems. It is preserved with papers strewn across the table as if he had just left.
Q 15Which 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 faced the Pelican, the house he rented for his parents. His wake was held at Brown's after his funeral in November 1953, and Caitlin's followed there in 1994.
Q 16The 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, Fernhill, gave the poem its name. The same place, renamed Gorsehill, is drawn far more bleakly in his short story 'The Peaches'.
Q 17In what poetic form is 'Do not go gentle into that good night', written for Thomas's dying father?
A villanelle
A villanelle: nineteen lines on two rhymes and two refrains. Thomas sent it to a friend in 1951, adding that the one person he couldn't show it to was his father, who didn't know he was dying.
Q 18Under which working title did Dylan Thomas send the BBC the first half of Under Milk Wood in 1950?
The Town That Was Mad
The Town That Was Mad was to end with the town declared insane and fenced off. He dropped that plot, printed half the play as 'Llareggub', then renamed it when his American agent warned the name would put audiences off.
Q 19How does Dylan Thomas describe Under Milk Wood's genre?
A play for voices
'A play for voices' is the play's subtitle: Under Milk Wood was written for radio, to be heard, not seen. Its town, Llareggub, reads 'bugger all' backwards.
Q 20Eleven days before its New York premiere, Dylan Thomas read Under Milk Wood solo at which university?
Harvard University
Harvard University's Fogg Museum heard him read the unfinished play alone on 3 May 1953. He finished the script for the full-cast premiere only after his agent's assistant locked him in a room.
A Child's Christmas in Wales
A Child's Christmas in Wales was an afterthought: Thomas reached the studio with too little to fill the record and remembered a Christmas story he had sold to a magazine. It became one of the label's best sellers.
Q 24In 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 went back to his hotel boasting of a record run of straight whiskies, a tally long since discounted as a tall story.
Q 25How 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 on returning to his hotel. Biographers now discount the tally as a tall story from a man who was already very ill.
Q 26Where in New York was Dylan Thomas staying during his fatal final visit?
The Chelsea
The Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street was his base from late October 1953. He collapsed there and was carried out in a coma on 5 November, four days before he died.
Q 27Which drug, injected by his doctor hours before he fell into a coma, may have hastened Dylan Thomas's death?
Morphine
Morphine. His doctor diagnosed delirium tremens and injected it though Thomas was already struggling to breathe; within hours he fell into a coma from which he never woke.
Q 28To which New York hospital was the comatose Dylan Thomas taken on 5 November 1953?
St Vincent's
St Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village took him in, already in a coma. Caitlin flew in from Britain, and her first words on arriving are reported as 'Is the bloody man dead yet?'
Q 29Rumour said Dylan Thomas drank himself to death, but which illness did his post-mortem name as the primary cause?
Pneumonia
Pneumonia was the primary cause the post-mortem recorded. Because he had been on a drinking binge in his last days, many assumed alcohol alone had killed him.
Q 30In which Christopher Nolan film does a scientist keep reciting Dylan Thomas's 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'?
Interstellar
Interstellar. Michael Caine's Professor Brand recites the poem while sending astronauts to find humanity a new home, yet confesses on his deathbed that he had long thought his plan to evacuate Earth impossible.