Wales Dylan Thomas

Unique documents from the life of Swansea poet Dylan Thomas - including the last letter he wrote from Laugharne and the original radio script of Under Milk Wood - have sold for £27,000 at auction.

Notebooks belonging to Swansea-born poet Dylan Thomas will go on show in Wales - more than 70 years after he sold them to a US university.

The move comes after a museum dedicated to the poet received a grant of almost £1 million.

The money - £935,700 in total - from the Heritage Lottery Fund will go towards the redevelopment of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.

It means memorabilia, including a love letter to his wife Caitlin, will be able to be brought out of the archives and put on show alongside the notebooks, which Thomas sold to the University of Buffalo, New York, in 1941.

Thomas, whose work includes Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and the play Under Milk Wood, died in 1953 aged 39.

A cliff-top bungalow in New Quay, Ceredigion, where Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin lived is up for sale.

The couple lived at the home named 'Majoda' between September 1944 and July 1945. It's said to be a place which inspired much of his best known poems and writing including ‘Quite Early One Morning.’

The house, depicted by a mock-up in the field next-door, was at the centre of the Hollywood film 'The Edge of Love' starring Keira Knightly, Sienna Miller and Matthew Rhys.

The film depicts Dylan Thomas and his wife in a complex three-way relationship with a neighbour, Vera Killick. Unfortunately for the poet, Vera’s husband was a Commando officer. Home on leave, he took against Dylan and one night fired a few shots at Majoda.

Today, Majoda is said to be much more peaceful.

The rent Dylan and his wife paid back then was £1 per week but the property had no electricity or running water. Today it has a price tag of around £450,000 and has been thoroughly modernised.

Events will be held around the world throughout 2014 to mark 100 years since the birth of Dylan Thomas.

At the National Museum in Cardiff, First Minister Carwyn Jones will open an event which will give details of these celebrations.

Also launching the international festival will be the poet's granddaughter Hannah Ellis, US writer and political activist Kevin Powell, former National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis and harpist Claire Jones.

People in Swansea may have been disappointed yesterday after the city failed to become Capital of Culture but focus is now on bringing an international audience the Dylan Thomas celebrations. Tom Sheldrick reports.

Details have been revealed today of events which will make the centenary of the birth of poet Dylan Thomas.

A year-long programme, taking place in 2014, will feature recitals, plays and workshops in venues across Wales.

The Welsh poet was born in 1914 in Swansea, and is most famous for works such as 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' and 'Under Milk Wood.'

The aim of the festival next year is to give Dylan Thomas even greater prominence.

A special exhibition of new illustrations of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood will be shown at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff from this evening until next March as a way to kick-start the festival.

The details of the year long festival to celebrate 100 years since Dylan Thomas's birth are being revealed in Swansea this morning. The Welsh poet was born in 1914 in Swansea and died in New York in 1953.