- The Observer,
- Sunday June 16 2002
Dylan Thomas wanted to mould himself into a typical troubled and trouble-making poet. At 17, he found that drink was the appropriate complement to his bardic life. He felt it allowed him to wash away his middle-class background and taste the gutter.
Local residents in Wales weren't amused by Thomas's dirty stories, his leering, his dedication to beer: 'I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its bright-brass depths.' It was with his wife, Caitlin, that he found his true drinking partner, which she attests to in her memoirs, claiming: 'Ours was not a love story, it was a drink story.' Thomas was amusing or enraging when drunk, depending on who you talk to.
He died suddenly at the age of 39. He was taking advantage of the long drinking hours in New York before starting a lecture tour (they were well paid, and he always needed money). But on 9 November 1953 it is said that Thomas swayed out of a bar after drinking 18 measures of whisky and later fell into a fatal coma. Caitlin visited him and was said to look perturbed: 'Is the bloody man dead yet?'
