Thomas's final home at Laugharne - roughly midway between Llanelli and Pembroke - isn't on a main road from anywhere to anywhere. But Thomas became fascinated by it on his first visit (by ferry, across the Taf estuary), at the age of nineteen; he lived there intermittently for much of his adult life and settled there in 1949. Used to the Swansea lilt, he was struck by the fact that, for complicated historical reasons, the residents of this tiny seaside settlement spoke with English accents; he described it as 'the strangest town in Wales' and 'a timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town'. Although New Quay in Ceredigion, where Thomas also lived for a short while, stakes a claim to be the setting for his great 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood, Laugharne undoubtedly provided the inspiration for many of its characters. Brown's Hotel, where Thomas used to drink, has been refurbished as a boutique hotel, but there's still a certain thrill to be got from rubbing shoulders with locals who might have been citizens of Llareggub.
Perched somewhat precariously above the waterside, the boathouse where Thomas lived is now a museum dedicated to his memory. Entering it feels like stepping back in time to the 1950s. There's a tiled fireplace with china firedogs and an old-fashioned mantel clock above it, a dropleaf table, a table lamp with fringed lampshade - all the sorts of things your grandparents had in their living room. Except that your grandparents probably didn't have a recording of Dylan Thomas reading his own works playing in the background, nor a bust of him that used to be owned by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (two other former visitors to Brown's Hotel). The house is frankly a little shabby, but then it's probably meant to be. Thomas, for all his success, never had money to throw around. Just up the hill, the 'writing shed' - the converted garage where he did most of his work - has an air of studied disarray. A jacket hangs over the back of the chair, the desk is strewn with papers, the wastepaper bin is two-thirds full. The poet, dissatisfied with what he is trying to write, has clearly just thrown down his pen in frustration and gone to the pub. But the view! Stare out the window or, better still, head back to the boathouse, have tea on the terrace and gaze out to sea and you'll see why any artist would have sold his soul to live here.
- Caroline Taggart, The Book Lover's Bucket List: A Tour of Great British Literature, London, 2021, p.188-9.
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