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' poetry.
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An enchanting book on every level, Aeronwy Thomas is not just her father's daughter but a skilled author in her own right. --Jennifer Worth, author of Call the Midwife.
It [the Boathouse] looks a magical place for a child to explore and so it proves in Aeronwy s clear-eyed, Laurie Lee-like memories of mudflats and sandbanks, picnics, swimming and going cockling ... this enchanted but unsentimental book ... of her wonderfully vivid childhood is profoundly moving. --Peter Lewis, Daily Mail.
A moving memoir … beautifully drawn.--Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.
Funny and elegiac, this is a moving tribute to a beloved parent and a lost world. --Good Book Guide
One of the best insights we have into Dylan Thomas --Contemporary Review
It [the Boathouse] looks a magical place for a child to explore and so it proves in Aeronwy s clear-eyed, Laurie Lee-like memories of mudflats and sandbanks, picnics, swimming and going cockling ... this enchanted but unsentimental book ... of her wonderfully vivid childhood is profoundly moving. --Peter Lewis, Daily Mail.
A moving memoir … beautifully drawn. --Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.
It [the Boathouse] looks a magical place for a child to explore and so it proves in Aeronwy s clear-eyed, Laurie Lee-like memories of mudflats and sandbanks, picnics, swimming and going cockling ... this enchanted but unsentimental book ... of her wonderfully vivid childhood is profoundly moving. --Peter Lewis, Daily Mail.
A moving memoir … beautifully drawn.--Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.
Funny and elegiac, this is a moving tribute to a beloved parent and a lost world. --Good Book Guide
One of the best insights we have into Dylan Thomas --Contemporary Review
It [the Boathouse] looks a magical place for a child to explore and so it proves in Aeronwy s clear-eyed, Laurie Lee-like memories of mudflats and sandbanks, picnics, swimming and going cockling ... this enchanted but unsentimental book ... of her wonderfully vivid childhood is profoundly moving. --Peter Lewis, Daily Mail.
A moving memoir … beautifully drawn. --Christopher Hart, Sunday Times.
Book Description
A beautiful, evocative memoir of growing up in the shadows of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas in Laugharne.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Roy Hewson
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This memoir of Aeronwy's childhood is brilliant-she clearly had her father Dylan's talent for writing. The insight into her parent's marriage (Caitlin & Dylan Thomas)well, only one 'who was there' could have written such a brilliant & truthful account. She pulled no punches and told it how it was, not only her parents difficult marriage beset as it was with drink and dependence upon the charity of others to pay the bills, but she also tells with blinding honesty of her own little failings. I'd have liked to have known her!!
Much of what she says-particularly homelife, the rows & Caitlin's ancient Irish stews I was told about in the 1950's by my friend-author Henry Treece who stayed with the family in Laugharne. Indeed Treece wrote the first ever critique of Dylan Thomas 'Dog Amongst the Fairies'-not well received by Dylan Thomas!
For someone living in Wales & familiar with the many landmarks,the Boat House & Brown's pub as described in the book it has been a great pleasure to read.
Much of what she says-particularly homelife, the rows & Caitlin's ancient Irish stews I was told about in the 1950's by my friend-author Henry Treece who stayed with the family in Laugharne. Indeed Treece wrote the first ever critique of Dylan Thomas 'Dog Amongst the Fairies'-not well received by Dylan Thomas!
For someone living in Wales & familiar with the many landmarks,the Boat House & Brown's pub as described in the book it has been a great pleasure to read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Aeronwy Thomas, who died in 2009, has written a melancholy account of her childhood and while there were clearly many instances of gaiety and love while she was growing up, her wayward and sometimes violent mother, Caitlin, and her father, Dylan, a poet of genius, offered a bizarre family life. The book was written she explains in an Afterword over a ten year period and this long time shows in the episodic nature of the story. None the less Aeronwy's account is touching and fair in terms of the way in which she writes of her parents. Their care, let alone love, for their children was intermittent to say the least, and her portrait of the time and the place, mostly Laugharne, in Carmarthenshire, is a valuable addition to the many biographies of Caitlin and Dylan.
Recommended.
Recommended.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Anteater
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Aeronwy Thomas was six when, in 1949, she moved with her father, Dylan and pregnant mother, Caitlin into the Boat House at Laugharne. This memoir describes vividly the places in coastal south Wales, alive with crabs, fish, dogs, friends, visitors, inhabitants that she shared with her parents during the following four years.
Beautiful Caitlin, reluctant housewife, continually bursts into the narrative, walking, dancing, swimming, sunbathing, smoking. She imposes a routine on Dylan. When he returns from his morning session of drinking and gossiping in Brown's Hotel, she feeds him before locking him in his writing shed where, when not reading thrillers or composing begging letters, he can be heard reciting the poem on which he is working. At 7 pm the prisoner poet is released and both parents take the cliffwalk to the pub.
Aeronwy's elder brother, Llewelyn considered his mother 'cruel, feckless and thoughtless'. Aeron tells how, as a newborn baby during the blitz, she was left alone every evening in a studio flat in London. Later, whenever she was naughty in Laugharne, Caitlin had no hesitation in beating her bare bum with a hairbrush until sitting was painful. However, Aeron throughout the book is sympathetic to both parents and sides with neither when telling of fierce, physical fights that followed revelations of infidelity during Dylan's American tours.
No-one can accuse Aeronwy's parents of being over anxious, though given freedom, but very few material things, the child found within herself resources to make the most of her surroundings, create imaginary worlds and develop an instinct for survival. Assuming her memory is reliable, we discover she had a friend who was frowned upon by adults, visited the dying dog of a reputed pedophile, accompanied a suspected murderer to feed a pig, and came to no harm. Few of us would want to take chances like this with our children. Aeronwy Thomas died, aged 66, a few weeks before this book was published. The effect her parents had on her achieving her potential can only be surmised.
Beautiful Caitlin, reluctant housewife, continually bursts into the narrative, walking, dancing, swimming, sunbathing, smoking. She imposes a routine on Dylan. When he returns from his morning session of drinking and gossiping in Brown's Hotel, she feeds him before locking him in his writing shed where, when not reading thrillers or composing begging letters, he can be heard reciting the poem on which he is working. At 7 pm the prisoner poet is released and both parents take the cliffwalk to the pub.
Aeronwy's elder brother, Llewelyn considered his mother 'cruel, feckless and thoughtless'. Aeron tells how, as a newborn baby during the blitz, she was left alone every evening in a studio flat in London. Later, whenever she was naughty in Laugharne, Caitlin had no hesitation in beating her bare bum with a hairbrush until sitting was painful. However, Aeron throughout the book is sympathetic to both parents and sides with neither when telling of fierce, physical fights that followed revelations of infidelity during Dylan's American tours.
No-one can accuse Aeronwy's parents of being over anxious, though given freedom, but very few material things, the child found within herself resources to make the most of her surroundings, create imaginary worlds and develop an instinct for survival. Assuming her memory is reliable, we discover she had a friend who was frowned upon by adults, visited the dying dog of a reputed pedophile, accompanied a suspected murderer to feed a pig, and came to no harm. Few of us would want to take chances like this with our children. Aeronwy Thomas died, aged 66, a few weeks before this book was published. The effect her parents had on her achieving her potential can only be surmised.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evocative of Laugharne
The book arrived promptly in excellent condition.
The descriptions were evocative of Laugharne in the 40s & 50s and gave an unsentimental account of Aeronwy's childhood within... Read more
The descriptions were evocative of Laugharne in the 40s & 50s and gave an unsentimental account of Aeronwy's childhood within... Read more
Published 21 days ago by Marianne
4.0 out of 5 stars
Couldnt wait to read this
Saw this book in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea and
had to buy it. What a great cover.
Whatever Aeronwy Thomas writes is alright with
me as she was there and I... Read more
had to buy it. What a great cover.
Whatever Aeronwy Thomas writes is alright with
me as she was there and I... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Miss S. P. Wells
1.0 out of 5 stars
One star as there isn't a minus button
I have always been a huge fan of the writing of Dylan Thomas and was delighted to discover that his daughter had put pen to paper to write an account of her father and of their... Read more
Published on 17 Oct 2009 by Martin A. Chambers
5.0 out of 5 stars
MY FATHER'S PLACES
Dylan Thomas' daughter writes well and there are many insights in this book that give me a more rounded feel about 'Thomas' character. Read more
Published on 7 Oct 2009 by Jdjenkins
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing
This book was rather disappointing. In fact, in some places the information was totally inaccurate as l knew one of the people mentioned. Read more
Published on 1 Oct 2009 by Isabella
5.0 out of 5 stars
Aeronwy, a daughters admiration for her Dad Dylan..
I have read seceral Dylan Thomas biographies previously, so was keen to read this after hearing it serialised on Radio 4. Read more
Published on 13 Sep 2009 by Ms. C. HARRIS
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