Dylan Thomas

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

With

Nerys Williams Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics at University College Dublin

John Goodby Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University

And

Leo Mellor The Roma Gill Fellow in English at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.2	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our
0:10.8	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you enjoy the programs.
0:16.8	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
0:25.4	that began in Wales and ended in a New York hospital. Some but far from all. He was
0:31.3	prolific in the second half of his life too, including poems
0:34.4	set in London under the Blitz and reworkings of his childhood in Swansea and his
0:38.6	famous radio play under Milkwood. And with his reading us in America and records of his works that sold
0:45.1	in their hundreds of thousands after his death, he's credited reviving the active poetry
0:49.6	his performance in the 20th century. We'd to discuss, Dr. Thomas, Arnerius Williams,
0:55.0	Associate Professor of Poetry and Poetics
0:57.0	at University College Dublin,
0:59.0	Leo Miller, The Roma Gill, fellow in English
1:02.0	at Murray Edward College University of Cambridge, and John
1:04.8	Goodby, Professor of Arts and Culture at Sheffield Hallam University.
1:09.6	John Goodby, what was Dylan Thomas' Childhood like? It was a happy childhood.
1:14.0	He was born 27th of October 1914 in a middle class
1:19.0	suburb of Swansea, the Uplandsy, the Uplands.
1:21.0	He was the second and last child of David John Thomas, D.J. as he was known and Florence
1:26.6	Williams, Flory, he had a sister, eight years older than him. The date is though, he had a happy childhood, but it comes at the beginning of the First World War, it had just begun, and Dylan would be of the generation that was caught between two wars, haunted by the First World War, dreading the second.
1:44.0	His father didn't fight, but a lot of parents and friends and neighbors did.
	...

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