My Father's Places

In 1949, after years of nomadic existence, nine-year-old Aeronwy Thomas and
her family arrived at the Boat House in Laugharne, a small village on the
Welsh coast. Here her father, the poet Dylan Thomas and mother, Caitlin, hoped
to find peace, a place to settle and work.

In Laugharne Dylan began some of his most famous works, including Under Milk
Wood. Mornings were spent in Brown's Hotel, listening to the gossip at Ivy
William's kitchen table. In the afternoons Caitlin would lock the poet into a
shed in the garden, where he sat speaking his verse aloud as he wrote, or
composed begging letters to patrons and friends. Often he would head off to
London, and old haunts.

Little Aeronwy enjoyed the new world around her. In the Boat House, ruled over
by Caitlin, there was baby Colm and in the holidays visits from big brother
Llewellyn, as well as Dolly, the cleaner and cook, and the house became a
refuge for village characters, including Booda the deaf, mute ferry man. The
memoir paints scenes of sudden drama and poetry: reading Wind in the Willows
with her father in the evenings; fish treading in the mud below the house with
her mother; afternoons with Grandma Flo and DJ at the Pelican.

Dylan's fame grows and he tours the United States to read his poetry. Aeronwy
watches as the marriage fractures, and at last the poet dies in New York, far
away from his children. My Father's Places is a deeply moving portrait of
growing up and an insight into the origins and the legacy of Dylan Thomas's
poetry.