Dylan Thomas: speeches for Hitler, balderdash for Walton and the true meaning of Under Milk Wood

My father came across Dylan Thomas in a Swansea pub in 1947. ‘Chap over there,’ said one of the regulars ‘is a poet.’ ‘What’s his name?’ asked my father. ‘No idea.’ That Thomas’s celebrity was rather patchy, even in his hometown just a few years before his death, illustrates how much his fame owes to the fans and memorialisers who have stoked the legend ever since. His centenary falls on 27th October.

He was morose, shy, florid-faced and hyper-sensitive. He described himself as having ‘the countenance of an excommunicated cherub’. His first poems, published in the 1930s, were greeted with cautious interest. Edith Sitwell championed him. So did Cyril Connolly. Sceptics found his imagery inscrutable or meaningless. Some called it surreal – a charge he detested. His greatest fault as a poet, his subordination of meaning to musicality, was also his greatest asset. By the late 1930s he was established as a reader and actor on BBC radio but his finances were chaotic.