Dylan Thomas's life is almost a blueprint for the life of a bohemian poet. Born in Swansea in 1914, he knew both acclaim and despair in his lifetime, and died amid alcohol and debts in New York at the age of thirty nine. He lived his life flamboyant and self centred almost as if he had future biographers in mind. It is hard sometimes to separate the truth from myth, and to put his life into its artistic and historical context. Paul Ferris's biography, first published in 1977 (Hodder & Stoughton), is regarded by many as the definitive account. As the editor of Thomas's collected letters, Paul Ferris had access to many of the intimate sources and, since Caitlin Thomas's death in 1992, he has discovered ninety unpublished letters, many to Caitlin herself, which shed new light on Thomas's life, work and death.