My Life with Dylan Thomas – Double Drink Story

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

O'r adeg y cyfarfu'r ddau mewn tafarn yn Llundain, roedd y ddiod gadarn yn rhan amlwg o fywydau Dylan Thomas a Caitlin. Bu'r ddiod yn fodd i gynnau eu hanturiaethau rhywiol, i leddfu eu swildod ac i gyfoethogi eu bywydau cymdeithasol. Yn y gyfrol hon mae Caitlin Thomas yn adrodd ei hanes - y da a'r drwg. Adargraffiad; cyhoeddwyd gyntaf yn 2008.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

From the moment they met at a pub in London, drink was the most conspicuous part of the lives of Caitlin and her 'genius poet', Dylan Thomas. It fuelled their sexual adventures, lessened their shyness and enriched their social life. This searing book is Caitlin's story of the passions, the rage and the tragic humour of those years of drink. Reprint; first published in 2008.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

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Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

First published posthumously in 1997, Caitlin Thomas’s ‘extraordinary memoir of a life dedicated to drink and Dylan Thomas’ is reissued here by Virago. And it is genuinely extraordinary. If my eyes had opened any wider as I turned the pages, they would have popped right out of my head. Amazement, horror, confusion, sheer disbelief – it is a rollercoaster-ride of emotions for reader and writer alike. The complexity of it all is astounding. As Caitlin Thomas says in her introduction, there are many good biographies of Dylan; but this book alone contains her ‘little personal contributions to the colourful picture’. In the struggle for sobriety, which she eventually achieved, Caitlin looks back on her early life and her years with Dylan, clearly attempting to make some sense of it all. But it is confusion that prevails. Reading the memoir is like walking through a hall of mirrors, the angle of vision and subsequent image constantly shifting. One minute she is praising Dylan’s poetic genius, the next she describes his poetry as ‘a never-ending sermon of senseless, jumbled, mumbled, confusing, strung-together words’. She adores her children, yet persistently abandons them. She had always wanted to be a great dancer; no, rewrite that, she had always wanted to be a writer. Was she overwhelmed by grief when Dylan died, or was she play-acting? It was either a great, eternal love or a perpetual sham. In the end, it is a very human tale of many conflicting truths. Caitlin blames much on the ‘mad morbid excrescences of drink’ and certainly twenty pints of black and tan (him) and twenty double Scotches (her) a night cannot have helped. But there is something much deeper and more complex at play here, and it is that indefinable something that both makes this book so compelling and feeds the enduring public fascination of the relationship. Fairytale or horror story? Neither or both. It depends on the angle of the mirror. Or on how many units you’ve consumed. Perhaps.