BOOK REVIEW: 'My Father's Places'
A Rare Look at Family Life of Legendary Welsh Poet Dylan Thomas by His Only Daughter
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Many people have written about their experiences with Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) but an intimate look at his family life had to await a memoir by his daughter Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis. With the American publication of Aeronwy's "My Father's Places" (A Herman Graf Book/Skyhorse Publishing, 218 pages, $19.95) this gap has been closed.
When Aeronwy was six, in 1949, her parents Dylan and Caitlin Thomas moved to the boathouse at the edge of the small Welsh village of Laugharne. Through a child's eye, she recalls the chaos and joy of living with Dylan Thomas while the poet was at the height of his creative powers, composing "Under Milk Wood."
Dylan Thomas met dancer Caitlin MacNamara in 1936. She was the lover of Augustus John (1878-1961), a legendary Wales-born painter and probably the leading Bohemian of England, famous -- or infamous, depending on one's point of view, for his many mistresses. John introduced the two and Thomas proposed to her on the spot. They married in 1937 at a registry office in Penzance, Cornwall. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born in 1939 (he died in 2000). Six years after Aeronwy was born in 1943, a son, Colm Garant Hart, was born in 1949.
"My Father's Places" is an episodic memoir, written by a skilled author recalling scenes of her childhood. I've come to distrust memoirs of this type, wondering how incidents of the past can be so vividly remembered and recorded on the printed page. Still, Aeronwy Thomas's writing rings true, making this book a valuable resource to any scholar of Dylan Thomas, as well as the general reader. In the Acknowlegements at the end of the book, on Pages 217-18, the author says she took ten years to write this memoir, drawing on information from many people and biographies of her famous dad.
The book is illustrated with never-before-published photographs of Dylan Thomas, Caitlin Thomas, a wild and eccentric mother if ever there was one! and the three children and their playmates. We also are treated to interludes featuring Caitlin Thomas's former lover (some say their affair continued after her marriage) Augustus John, and A.J.P. Taylor and Dylan Thomas's father and mother, among many others. Dylan Thomas drew heavily on the residents of Laugharne for his works. He also traveled to America frequently was in New York City when he died. Caitlin Thomas was very jealous of her husband, suspecting that he was unfaithful during his travels. All the publicity material on the book states it has 288 pages, but I counted only 218 pages in the review copy sent to me. Perhaps there was a typo in the publicity material.
About the author
Aeronwy Thomas-Ellis was born in London in 1943 and died of cancer in 2009. She was named for the River Aeron. Following her father's death in 1953, she and her mother went to Rome, later moving to Sicily. She earned a BA in English and Comparative Religion at Isleworth College and was a writer, translator and poet and president of the Dylan Thomas Society. She was also her father's literary executor. She and her husband, Trefor Ellis, had two children. "My Father's Places" was published by Constable in England in 2009 shortly after Aeronwy's death.
Publisher's website: www.skyhorsepublishing.com