Dylan Thomas

1914 (Swansea, Wales) – 1953 (New York)

Eliot dithered over Thomas’s poems, but encouraged him and sent him money. Auden, Spender and MacNeice broadcast with him, Spender also raising money for him, and MacNeice attending his funeral. Miller met him while visiting an old friend in London; Ferlinghetti met him in Paris and drank with him in San Francisco. Chaplin threw him out for arriving drunk, Thomas retaliating by urinating on a plant on his doorstep. Stravinsky wrote to him just before he died, about collaborating on a post-apocalyptic opera, and composed a piece dedicated to his memory.