Dylan Day - a celebration of the work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas - is a great idea for a number of reasons.  Firstly it's always a good idea to celebrate art and literature.  In a world full of Trump, May, Brexit, Syria and conflict, it's a very good idea to remind ourselves of the real reason we are all really here.  For the sweet, satisfied moments of family, friendship, kindness, vision and imagination.  I can’t remember who said a civilised society is only measured by the success of it...

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It’s been great being involved with the new International Dylan Day. 14 May each year has been designated Dylan Day to mark the first time his play for voices ‘Under Milk Wood’ was performed in public in the USA. It’s a direct lift from Blooms Day, an annual event inspired by one of the lead characters in Ulysses, by James Joyce. We're going to celebrate it this year with an extra tour and extra Dylan content.  Book now for 13th May - the Saturday before the day.  We also have some id...

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We were all a bit surprised when Bob Dylan was awarded his Nobel prize for literature.  Our Charles Dickens Christmas Crawl stops at the very pub where Bob Dylan gave his first ever public performance outside the USA!  This is what Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds thought about it.

To the surprise of many, Bob Dylan has become the first singer-songwriter to win the Nobel prize in literature.

As the news broke, I was in the middle of teaching James Joyce to s...

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Having just celebrated the second Dylan Thomas day, we came across this on Facebook.  Written by Josh Brown, it's self-explanatory.  Nick Hennegan, our writer, really liked it and Josh gave us permission to repost it, so here it is.  Thanks Josh!

 

 
Brown's Hotel, Laugharne, Wales.

 

I have meant to post about my visit to Laugharne in the 70's since joining the [Dylan Thomas Facebook] group. Here it is........

 

I was born in a snowstorm in 1947, 6 years before Dylan died. My mo...

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The roots of the Literary Pub Crawl lie in the Fitzroy Tavern. I was doing my Masters at the University of London and looking for a cheap pint.  My mate from Birmingham, filmmaker Andy Bloom, suggested I could get a cheaper pint at the Fitzroy, as the pub was run by the Sam Smiths Brewery and they were considerably cheaper than other pubs in the area.  He also told me about the Writers and Artists Bar at the pub, which certainly appealed.

So I was nursing my cheap pint downstairs and couldn't ...
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An Evening at The Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Place, London, W1. 8pm

Dylan's Day is a celebration of Dylan Thomas.  14 May has been chosen because marks the day Under Milk Wood was first read in public.

We hope you can join us for what will be a memorable night. As you know, we produced Under Milk Wood on the 60th anniversary of Dylan's death and we were involved in Griff Rhys Jones' Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia Festival, so I feel very close to the Welsh Wizard!  We're planning music, poetry and a r...
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We started 2014 in the shadow of the previous year.

My experiment with theatre in a pub, as opposed to Pub Theatre as it's understood in London, had proved very successful in 2013.  I managed to get the rights to produce Under Milk Wood on the 60th anniversary of Dylan Thomas' death.  It proved a success in a number of ways, but mainly though conversations with the excellent veteran theatre director John Adams.  John was not available to direct, but he recommended a former student of his who ...

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Thursday, 2 October 2014

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It's me birthday!  Thanks!  Feel free to send cards. Or cash... :-)

Birthdays are often a time for reflection.  When I first got the idea for the London Literary Pub Crawl, it was because I was taking my M.A. and I was flat broke.  In spite of never having received a grant for education, for reasons known only to the Education Dept I had to fund everything myself.  It was tough - not only the fees, but living in one of the most expensive cities in the world.  But I don't think we'd have done t...
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Or at least the final blog of this particular production. What can I say! We’ve just finished and I’ve just got back from the last night.  And the consumption of a few drinks with the cast makes this not the best time to write this, perhaps! But it became a big deal for me. As you may have gathered from the previous blogs, I had a number of concerns with this production. Although small in scale it was large in ambition and my first toe in the West End water.  I only actually got to watch ...
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This week has been quite interesting in terms of Under Milk Wood.  The decision to do it as a fundraiser has been quite liberating.  It means we're all in the same boat and anybody who wants to be involved with the project will be doing it for the love of the piece and the experience rather than any hard financial reward. Any funds we do raise will go to Maverick in the hope we might be able to resurrect the youth group or The Peoples' Company.

After my last blog I had a Facebook comment tha...

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I love the image above we are using for Under Milk Wood.  It has a wistful quality to it and that is how I feel about some of our writers - especially Dylan Thomas, who was taken from us so tragically early. I also love Wales, and this image kind of sums up my schoolboy holidays in out-of-season seaside towns. This bench has seen a lot, you can just tell.  And it quietly waits for the next joyful - or maybe melancholy - experience. 

But enough wooden bench and more Milk Wood.  He was a smart c...
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I had the pleasure of spending a week in Wales last month. A beautiful country and the home of my childhood holidays. Most of our time had been spent around Aberdyfi and Corris, but this time we moved a little further south and rediscovered New Quay.  And as I walked into town, I was greeted by an image of the boyo himself. Yep, New Quay has a Dylan Thomas Trail!



Dylan lived in many places and he is most generally associated with his Boathouse in Laugharne even further to the South, but he and...
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Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas

£ 15 Friday 8th November 2013 at 7.30pm Saturday 9th November, 2013 at 2.30pm The Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Street, London, W1T 1JB   A rare, fund-raising performance of the "play for voices' given on the very day Dylan died sixty years ago. The Maverick Theatre Company and the Literary Pub Crawl Company present this stunning vocal masterpiece in the same pub where Dylan Thomas drank and met his wife, Caitlan.   A unique, not-to-be-missed event celebrating the genius o...

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Well, what a year 2012 has been.  The Silver Jubilee, the Olympics and more importantly (to us anyway) the launch of the London Literary Pub Crawl.  It's because we are a not-for-profit charity with no budget that the critical and audience acclaim we've received early on has been so important and so crucial... and so moving.  Partly inspired by the Olympics coming to London, I felt a desire - perhaps a passion - to share what I'd found out about the struggle some of the worlds most famous wri...

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We had a query this week from someone wondering what preparation they should make for the tour. Well, it is written assuming no previous knowledge, but works covered on the tour include A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, 1984 by George Orwell, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and various Charles Dickens works. We've also some new work from the niece of Brendan Behan and we get to meet all the above, plus William Blake, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Barnard a...
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If you've been on the tour, you'll know that the Fitzrovia leg is more theatrical than the Soho leg. We enact various scenes, including Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange, etc) meeting a knife gang in the Duke and Dylan Thomas meeting his wife at the Wheatsheaf. But then Soho becomes a more 'traditional' tour. That's about to change very soon. I've written a number of pieces around our Soho artists and writers and I hope its going to transform what we already have.

I'm very pleased with critica...
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