It's that time of year again, the famous (or should that be infamous?) Laugharne weekend is upon us and the small seaside town in West Wales will be alive with festival goers hoping that everything will be as quirky and as chaotic as normal - they would be disappointed if things were to run smoothly! You [...]
Mothering Sunday is always a strange day, as those of you that have lost a parent will understand. Previously I have avoided Facebook, parks, and restaurants, anywhere in fact where I may bump into mothers celebrating with their children. However this year I took a slightly different tact and decided to put time aside to [...]
We’re two months away from Dylan Day. A press release has gone out and journalists have marked the date in their diaries, events are being confirmed, (keep checking our Dylan Day page as they are coming in fast and furiously) and the ‘Love the Words’ writing competition for children and young people has been launched. [...]
I have had a few experiences recently that have completely caught me off guard. The result being that I am now challenging myself and questioning my recall of some very significant memories. On Monday evening, as usual, I was driving my son to football training. I parked the car, switched off the engine and looked [...]
You’re at a work colleague’s wedding reception and there are the few odd faces you know, but, in general, they are all strangers. Sitting around the large circular table, and after the awkward introductions, and the polite descriptions about how you know the bride and groom, the person to your left turns to you and [...]
Who is Dylan Thomas to you? Is he a rebel? A ‘one-off' that sticks two fingers up to authority and does things his own way. Is he the doomed poet? The wild-eyed and troubled bard knocking back shot after shot of whisky and intent on self-destruction? It's possible that you may recall him [...]
“Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” pleaded Dylan Thomas as he watched his ailing father, D.J, battle with the devastating effects of throat cancer. He was slowly but surely losing his eyesight and one of the shattering consequences of that was, that the once [...]
Dear Dylan, I'm writing in the hope that you're listening from a realm where we will exist after our earthly light is snuffed out. A place that is green with no need to rage. In one respect you do, your work and biography ripples through time ebbing and flowing. Academics, schoolkids, the bloke down the [...]
As I was digging through my dad’s bookshelves (I often take a peek when I visit and ‘borrow’ a volume or two), which are overloaded with books by and about Dylan Thomas I came across a thin pink book, it’s more a pamphlet actually, called Christmas and Other Memories by Aeronwy Thomas. It’s an absolutely [...]
A recently-discovered archive of 1950s photographs of the places Dylan Thomas wove into his work is the basis of a new book, Ugly, Lovely - Dylan Thomas’s Swansea and Carmarthenshire of the 1950s in Pictures (Parthian Books). Its editor, Hilly Janes, describes how she discovered them in an old cardboard box... They must have [...]
