Dylan Thomas

16 Jun, 2022 820 English and Old English literatures

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas (1914 - 1953). He wrote some of his best poems before he was twenty in the first half of his short, remarkable life, and was prolific in the second half too with poems such as those set in London under the Blitz and reworkings of his childhood in Swansea, and his famous radio play Under Milk Wood (performed after his death). He was read widely and widely heard: with his reading tours in America and recordings of his works that sold in their hundreds of thousands after his death, he is credited with reviving the act of poetry as performance in the 20th century.

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Guests

  • Nerys Williams No other episodes
    Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics at University College Dublin
  • John Goodby No other episodes
    Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University
  • Leo Mellor No other episodes
    The Roma Gill Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

Reading list

  • Reading Dylan Thomas
    Edward Allen (ed.) (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) Google Books →
  • Reading Dylan Thomas
    Ned Allen (ed.) (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) Google Books →
  • New Theoretical Perspectives on Dylan Thomas: "A writer of words, and nothing else"?
    Rhian Barfoot and Kieron Smith (eds.) (University of Wales Press, 2020) Google Books →
  • The Growth of Under Milk Wood
    Douglas Cleverdon (New Directions, 1969) Google Books →
  • Dylan Thomas's Swansea, Gower and Laugharne
    James A. Davies (University of Wales Press, 2014) Google Books →
  • Dylan Thomas: Writers of Wales
    Walford Davies (University of Wales Press, 2014) Google Books →
  • Dylan Thomas: Open Guides to Literature
    Walford Davies (Open University Press, 1986) Google Books →
  • Dylan Remembered, Volume 1: 1914-1934
    Colin Edwards (ed. David N. Thomas) (Seren Press, 2003) Google Books →
  • Dylan Remembered, Volume 2: 1935-1953
    Colin Edwards (ed. David N. Thomas) (Seren Press, 2004) Google Books →
  • The Poetry of Dylan Thomas: Under the Spelling Wall
    John Goodby (Liverpool University Press, 2013) Google Books →
  • The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas
    John Goodby and Adrian Osbourne (eds.) (Bloomsbury, 2020)
  • The Three Lives of Dylan Thomas
    Hilly Janes (Parthian, 2014) Google Books →
  • Apocalypse: An Anthology
    James Keery (ed.) (Carcanet, 2020) Google Books →
  • Dylan Thomas: A New Life
    Andrew Lycett (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2003) Google Books →
  • Reading the Ruins: Modernism, Bombsites and British Culture
    Leo Mellor (Cambridge University Press, 2011) Google Books →
  • Surrealism in Britain
    Michel Remy (Routledge, 1999) Google Books →
  • War Like a Wasp: The Lost Decade of the Forties
    Andrew Sinclair (Faber, 2009) Google Books →
  • The Broadcasts
    Dylan Thomas (ed. Ralph Maud) (J. M. Dent, 1991) Google Books →
  • The Collected Poems
    Dylan Thomas (ed. John Goodby) (Orion, 2016) Google Books →
  • The Collected Letters
    Dylan Thomas (ed. Paul Ferris) (J. M. Dent, 2000) Google Books →
  • Under Milk Wood
    Dylan Thomas (Orion, 2014) Google Books →

Related episodes

Programme ID: m001882k

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001882k

Auto-category: 821.912 (English poetry–20th century)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. Dylan Thomas, 1914 to 1953, wrote some of his best poems before he was 20, in the first half of his short, remarkable life that began in Wales and ended in a New York hospital.