Thomas, Dylan

The Welsh poet Dylan Mariais Thomas spent his childhood and youth at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea, with his father, David John Thomas, a teacher, his mother, Florence Hannah (born Williams), a seamstress, and his nine years older sister Nancy. The children grew up in an English-speaking household, although their parents knew Welsh, their father even taught it and named his son after Dylan ail Don, a character in the Mabinogion, a Welsh 14th century collection of oral tales. Dylan Thomas’s birthplace is now a museum. The Thomases often spent their summer holidays in Carmarthenshire at Dylan’s maternal grandparent’s farm. He attended Swansea Grammar School, which was also the school where his father taught, until the age of sixteen. He acted in a number of plays at the Little Theatre in Swansea and in 1931–32 he worked as a proof-reader and junior reporter at the South Wales Daily Post.