Dylan Thomas: A New Life - Tapa dura

'Andrew Lycett's scrupulously researched book is a model of scholarly objectivity...definitive, revealing and painful.' (John Carey THE SUNDAY TIMES (12.10.03))

'[Lycett's} narrative benefits from many unpublished sources...The biography tells the story of Dylan's life with plenty of energy and local colour...Lycett's assiduous examination of letters and diaries has swelled the list of his love-affairs and exposed a body of unedifying unpublished verse characterised by schoolboy profanities.' (Jonathan Bate THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (12.10.03))

'This is a disturbing and impressive book about a sad man, a tragic man, a drunkard, a lovable cad, a Welshman and a poetic genius, all subsumed in the endlessly equivocal person of Dylan Thomas. No poet of our time has been more thoroughly analysed than our Dylan, but Andrew Lycett approaches the exhausting task with thoroughness, scholarship and true humanity.' (Jan Morris NEW STATESMAN (16.10.03))

'What does Andrew Lycett give us in this biography that is new? He helps us to recognise that Thomas was a more various poet and versifier than we would have imagiuned by quoting a number of excellent examples of unpublished light verse, which demonstrates what a great verse mimic Thomas could be. He makes it clear to us how much Thomas learnt from his years of filmmaking in the 1940s, how it helped to hone and clarify his later writing.' (Michael Glover FINANCIAL TIMES (18.10.03))

[an] astonishingly detailed, deeply and expertly researched, and captivatingly written biorgraphy...frankly, stunning...[Lycett] has not only chronicled Thomas's life intricately and almost month by month but also interpreted his relationships with others, putting Thomas's work into context...Apart from being a biography, this book is in many ways a readers companion - it is that detailed. Andrew Lycett's magnificent book has to be the definitive study of Thomas's life. (Martin Booth LITERARY REVIEW (November))

'Andrew Lycett sheds much new light on the work and personal life of Thomas's early life, which have been glossed over by previous biographers...an absorbing page-turner.' (Vanessa Curtis THE HERALD (Glasgow 18.10.03))

'this is the best biography of the poet I have ever read. Andrew Lycett has turned up plenty of scandalous new material about Thomas's private life, including a previously unknown diary of his last days kept by his American mistress Liz Reitell...he [Lycett] seems actually to like and understand Thomas's poems, bringing an intelligent discrimination to the business of relating them to his subject's life. All in all this is a book that no-one interested in Dylan Thomas can afford to be without. (Robert Nye THE SCOTSMAN (1.11.03))

he [Lycett] is particularly good on Thomas's income, translating figures to 2003 values to show how much the poet squandered. (Stephen Knight INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY (26.10.03))

'Andrew Lycett's excellent new life, brutally clear in many places, though never short of compassion, should make a just evaluation of Thomas possible at last.' (SUNDAY HERALD (Glasgow, 2.11.03))

Lycett narrates a fascinating story...Panoramic in its scope with heaps of anecdotes and a magnificent cast of supporting characters, this might well be the last workd on Dylan Thomas that the reader will need for some time. (Philip Hamer CITY LIFE (Manchester))