BOOKPATHS

Laugharne, Wales

Sankha Guha visits Dylan Thomas’s Laugharne.

Thomas wrote his 'play for voices' here. To see exactly where, I take the path from the car park around the perimeter of Laugharne Castle, which commands the mudflats and marshes of the oozing estuary. The castle, with its wrecked turrets and crenellations, is an archetypical romantic ruin that has inspired poets and painters alike – Turner painted it in 1831. Dylan Thomas picked his spot. Having lived in the town at various other addresses, he had his eye on the Boat House for years. In 1949, he finally got his chance, courtesy of his benefactor, Margaret Taylor, who bought the house for him. – from “The Little Welsh Town that Inspired a Literary Giant,” by Sankha Guha, The Independent

Wales

Welsh author Rachel Trezise chooses her “top 10 Welsh underground novels.”

Books that could be described as 'Welsh underground novels for the Skins generation' were once scarce as chicken lips. Remember that there was no such thing as a teenager until the 50s, and that everything comes across the Severn bridge 20 years late. Add the huge hole left in Welsh literature by aspiring writers boarding trains to London and putting memories of the principality firmly behind them from the early 80s onward. Then you'll understand why some of these entries aren't strictly underground, Welsh, or aimed at the Skins generation. But you'll notice too that some of them are. These are the new guard, the brave, hip inkslingers who began cropping up with an extraordinary force in the early noughties. – from “Rachel Trezise’s Top 10 Welsh Underground Novels,” The Guardian

Swansea, Wales

A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas (various editions)

A Child's Christmas in Wales sooths, comforts, and readies us for the pleasures of the season. It's a gift for the senses. We feel the snow as "it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees;" and hear the music of the season, as "an uncle played fiddle, a cousin sang 'Cherry Ripe,' and another uncle sang 'Drake's Drum.'" We touch the gifts, both "useful," "eugulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths," and "useless," "bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap." Taste buds awaken as Thomas describes the "turkey and blazing pudding." Smells, too, waft through the book's short length, "the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils." As Dylan Thomas recalls his childhood Christmases, we remember our own and, as we do, the book moves beyond Wales and into every heart that enjoys warm memories of the season.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. -- from A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas

Related Websites

BBC -- Dylan Thomas

The County and City of Swansea

A Child's Christmas in Wales sooths, comforts, and readies us for the pleasures of the season. It's a gift for the senses. We feel the snow as "it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees;" and hear the music of the season, as "an uncle played fiddle, a cousin sang 'Cherry Ripe,' and another uncle sang 'Drake's Drum.'" We touch the gifts, both "useful," "eugulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths," and "useless," "bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap." Taste buds awaken as Thomas describes the "turkey and blazing pudding." Smells, too, waft through the book's short length, "the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils." As Dylan Thomas recalls his childhood Christmases, we remember our own and, as we do, the book moves beyond Wales and into every heart that enjoys warm memories of the season.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. -- from A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas

Related Websites

BBC -- Dylan Thomas

The County and City of Swansea

The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea, Wales

The Dylan Thomas Centre, open from 10:00 until 4:30 p.m. daily, celebrates “Swansea’s world famous poet.”

The Dylan Thomas Centre has a permanent exhibition on Dylan Thomas and his life, as well as a cosy cafe and bookshop stuffed with books, posters and memorabilia.  The Centre is also home to many literary events throughout the year, including the annual Dylan Thomas Festival during October and November. – from The Dylan Thomas Centre Website

Swansea, Wales

Dylan Thomas’s boyhood home has opened its door to guests.

“Guests prepared to forsake television, radio, microwaves and telephones for the sake of sleeping in a literary shrine - entertainment is provided by a gramophone and a copy of a 1914 newspaper - can now rent the house on 'the sea-town corner' in Swansea, Thomas's home until he was 20.” – Maev Kennedy, The Guardian

Wales

David Atkinson follows in the footsteps of Dylan Thomas.

“Next day, I pick up the Thomas trail again and head for Laugharne, a cluster of stone-built cottages eight miles from Carmarthen along winding country lanes. Built around the Grist, the town square with its ancient cross and views of Laugharne's 12th-century castle overlooking the Taf estuary, the town is said to have inspired Llareggub, the small Welsh town in which Under Milk Wood is set. The name is 'bugger all' spelt backwards, but appeared in print as Llaregyb so as not to offend delicate post-war sensibilities. Thomas first came to Laugharne in May 1938 and returned frequently, writing of the town: 'In this timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town... here we are, and there is nowhere like it anywhere at all.'” – from “Follow in the Footsteps of Dylan Thomas,” by David Atkinson, The Guardian

Wales

Novelist and resident Niall Griffiths encourages travel to his “sleepy corner of Wales.”

“Things unwind, in Wales; tensed muscles are unknotted, lungs open, colours and sounds are honed and sharpened and your senses rise to accommodate them. Nothing makes a clanging noise, if you don't want it to.” – from “Go Slow in Wales,” by Niall Griffiths, The Guardian

Swansea, Wales

Ricahrd Green responds to a reader’s travel question about visiting “Swansea and the Dylan Thomas Center.”

“The most intimate location on the Thomas trail though is Laugharne, an eccentric little town that inspired him to write ‘Under Milk Wood’. He and his wife Caitlin lived in a pretty cottage here from 1949, until his death in 1953. Called The Boathouse (01267 228236, entry £3.50), it's now a delightful museum dedicated to Thomas, sitting on the banks of the River Taff.” – from “A Dylan Thomas Weekend,” by Richard Green, The Times

Bookpath: Wales

How Green was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn (New York : Scribner, reprint 1997; originally published in 1939).

Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley tells the touching story of a coal mining family in a Welsh village at the turn of the century. John Ford’s movie adaptation won the 1941 Academy Award for Outstanding Motion Picture.

“I have often stood outside the door looking down the Valley, seeing in my mind all the men coming up black with dust, and laughing in groups, walking bent-backed because the street is steep and in those days it was not cobbled.

The houses, of course, are the same now as they were then, made of stone from the quarries. There is a job they must have had carting all those blocks all those miles in carts and wains and not one road that you could call really good, because the land was all farms, then.” – from How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn

Bookpath: The Dylan Thomas Boathouse at Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, Wales

The Boathouse at Laugharne, the home where Dylan Thomas lived with his wife and three children from 1949 until his death in 1953, is open to the public. The museum “recreates the interior of the Boathouse as it would have been when Dylan Thomas and his family lived there,” including the kitchen, living room, parlour, bedrooms, and the poet’s writing shed, his “wordsplashed hut”. Windows and grounds look out across the beautiful and peaceful estuary – water, birds, and ever-changing light. A video tells of Dylan Thomas’ life and local artists’ work reflects on the estuary and village.

The museum is open daily. Travel down the narrow road to the Boathouse from May through October and during the Easter weekend between 10:00-5:30. November to April hours are10:30 to 3:30.

The Dylan Thomas Boathouse at Laugharne website offers visitor information, while also serving as “a cultural heritage and educational learning resource,” with “comprehensive information about the poet’s life, works and literary context.” A “virtual tour” of the Boathouse travels through the museum rooms sharing photographs and quotations from Thomas’ work.

Dylan and Caitlin Thomas are buried in Laugharne’s parish church graveyard.

It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
-- from “Poem in October”, by Dylan Thomas