The Wales holiday visitor to Swansea can scarcely avoid being reminded that this lovely, ugly town,' is the birthplace of poet and playwright, boozer and womaniser Dylan Thomas.
Down on the waterfront, amid the waving, slapping masts of the bobbing yachts in the marina, is a statue of the seated Welsh writer looking wistfully across what in his day was the dock area. On the other side of the marina, looking out on the mouth of the Tawe river is the former Town Hall which now houses the Dylan Thomas Centre, a must see for Wales holiday Dylan fans. It is only a couple of stone's throw from the "Evening Post" building, reminding the visitor that the young Dylan started his writing career as a reporter on that newspaper, but not in its current office. He worked in the 1930s in the Dickensian office housed in and around the old castle which dominates Castle Square, and his journalistic career did not last long.
Wales holiday visitors who have read his story will know that even as a teenager he loved his pint and, although his reviews of plays in local theatres were interesting and unique, they were not particularly appreciated by the sub-editors who had to vet them for publication, for some of his comments were actionable and his language, while colourful, was often not particularly moderate.
He wrote of his short career with the paper in his Portrait of the Artist", giving a very accurate description of some of his senior colleagues, particularly the Chief Reporter Edwin Job, a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-swearing Wesleyan whom he called Mr Solomon and who was as opposed in character to the hard-drinking, swearing, smoking Dylan as it was possible to be.
The Dylan Thomas Centre, which is a popular port of call with many Wales holiday visitors, gives a fascinating and comprehensive insight into the bawdy poet's life. It chronicles his time in the company of his artist, poet and composer friends in the Kardomah Coffee Shop and in the pubs, his days in the Grammar School where his father taught English and his visits to the park near his home in Cwmdonkin Drive, with its panoramic view across the bay to Mumbles. The Wales holiday visitor can spend an hour or two in the Centre, looking at the photographs, listening to Dylan's sonorous voice proclaiming some of his best-known poems, and hearing an eye-witness account of his visits to America, the last one ending in his death.
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