A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas By Dylan Thomas Sign Up for Our Free Newsletters Thanks, You're in! What I Learned About Today You might also enjoy: Health Tip of the Day Recipe of the Day There was an error. Please try again. Please select a newsletter. Please enter a valid email address. Did you mean ? Updated October 30, 2015. "A Child's Christmas in Wales" is by Dylan Thomas. Take a look at this famous holiday work. A Child's Christmas in Wales One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.

In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. continue reading below our video 4 Tips for Improving Test Performance It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder. "Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong. And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room. Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face.

But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper. "Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong. "There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas." There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting. "Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box. "Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires." But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss.

Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?" Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea." "But that was not the same snow," I say.

"Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards." "Were there postmen then, too?" "With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells." "You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?" "I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them." "I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells." "There were church bells, too." "Inside them?" "No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea.

It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence." Prev A Child A Child's Christmas In Wales by My most favourite poet is Dylan Thomas and my favourite Christmas Story is "A Child's Christmas in Wales", written by the same author. So, I am delighted to provide the following link via which you can not only read the whole story but also hear it being told by Dylan Thomas himself. I am sure you will be delighted by it. "A Child's Christmas In Wales" If, as you result reading/hearing this, you would like to buy this wonderful piece for your own pleasure or perhaps a gift for someone else (In book, CD or cassette form) you can do so by using the 'pull-down' menu in the search box below to find 'books' then inserting 'A Child's Christmas In Wales' in the box below.

A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas, free ebooks, ebook, etext treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership Title: A Child's Christmas in Wales Author: Dylan Thomas * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0701261h.html Language: English Date first posted: December 2007 Date most recently updated: December 2007 This ebook was produced by: Dr Mark Bear Akrigg Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.

You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at GO TO Project Gutenberg of Australia HOME PAGE A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. All the Christmases roll down towards the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen. It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs.

Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, although there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slide and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared. We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows—eternal, ever since Wednesday—that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.

"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong. And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, towards the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room. Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper. "Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong. "They won't be here," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas." There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting. "Do something," he said.

And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke—I think we missed Mr. Prothero—and ran out of the house to the telephone box. "Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires." But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always.

She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said: "Would you like anything to read?" Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea." "But that was not the same snow," I say.

"Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards." "Were there postmen then, too?" "With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells." "You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?" "I mean that the bells that the children could hear were inside them." "I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells." "There were church bells, too." "Inside them?" "No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea.

It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence." "Get back to the postmen." "They were just ordinary postmen, fond of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles...." "Ours has got a black knocker...." "And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out." "And then the presents?" "And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs.

"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone." "Get back to the Presents." "There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us.

And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles's pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why." "Go on to the Useless Presents." "Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by a mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any color I please, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknel, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run.

And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons." "Were there Uncles like in our house?" "There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas mornings, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swathed town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading, scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddled their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow.

Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers.

Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edges of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers." Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two curling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars.

Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself. I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheek bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens.

Aunt Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, then when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar. Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge deep footprints on the hidden pavements.

"I bet people will think there've been hippos." "What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?" "I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail." "What would you do if you saw two hippos?" Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow towards us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house. "Let's post Mr. Daniel a snowball through his letter box." "Let's write things in the snow." "Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn." Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?" The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea.

Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year. Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets.

At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?" "No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two, three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small, dry voice through the keyhole.

And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town. "Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading. "Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that. Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed.

I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. Welsh Poets & Authors | Welsh Artists | Visit Wales Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas statue, Swansea Perhaps Wales’ best known writer. Born in Swansea, he spent much time in New York and Ceredigion. Thomas wrote poems, short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His most celebrated works include Under Milk Wood, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Fern Hill and A Child's Christmas In Wales. RS Thomas One of Wales' most commanding literary figures, with a writing career that spanned five decades and produced over 20 volumes of poetry. In 1996, at the age of 83, Thomas was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. His collections of poetry include The Stones of the Field, Song at the Year's Turning, Ingrowing Thoughts and Mass for Hard Times. Roald Dahl Plas, Cardiff Bay The best-selling author of children's books. Often illustrated by Quentin Blake, Dahl's children's fiction is most often told from a child's point of view.

Dahl was born in Llandaff, Cardiff, in 1916 to Norwegian parents and worshipped at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff Bay which is now arts centre. Cardiff Bay is also home to the Roald Dahl Plas , a public plaza where many events take place. His most famous works include The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda. Philip Pullman The author of over twenty children's novels, and has also published two play adaptations. He was born in Norwich in 1946, and educated in England, Zimbabwe and Australia before his family settled in North Wales. The first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy (published as The Golden Compass in the USA), was adapted for film in 2007. Pullman’s other works include The Haunted Storm, Northern Lights and The Amber Spyglass. Owen Sheers Owen Sheers Poet and short story writer. Born in Fiji, Sheers was brought up in Abergavenny. He was named by The Independent on Sunday as one of Britain’s Top Thirty Young Writers. The Dust Diaries, a montage of fiction, biography and travelogue, won the Wales Book of the Year 2005.

In 2011, Owen wrote the script and novelisation of The Passion for National Theatre Wales and WildWorks. Kate Roberts One of the foremost Welsh language writers of the twentieth century, Roberts was known as The Queen of our Literature. Born near Caernarfon, she worked as a teacher in various schools in South Wales. Best known for her short stories, such as Te Yn y Grug (Tea in the Heather) and Ffair Gaeaf a Storiau Eraill (Winter Fair and Other Stories), she also wrote novels, such as Traed Mewn Cyffion (Feet in Chains). Many of Roberts’ works have been translated into other languages. Beatrix Potter Much loved by generations of children for her illustrated animal tales, Beatrix Potter was a regular visitor to Wales. She often stayed with her uncle, Fred Burton, at his home, Gwaenynog Hall in Denbighshire, where she would would sit in the garden and sketch. It was here that she created The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies. Fred’s descendants, who still own the house, open the garden each summer, while Peter Rabbit’s extended family still get up to mischief among the lovely, Victorian-style borders.

Gillian Clarke Gillian Clarke The poet, playwright, editor, translator and National Poet of Wales. Clarke was born in Cardiff and now lives in Ceredigion. Her prize-winning and critically acclaimed poetry is studied throughout the world and has been translated into ten languages. Her publications include At the Source, A Recipe for Water, Collected Poems, Five Fields and Making Beds for the Dead. Dannie Abse Poet, novelist and dramatist who was born in Cardiff. The Presence won the 2008 Wales Book of the Year award and he also won the Roland Mathias Prize in 2007. Abse is a frequent contributor to the BBC, was President of the Poetry Society between 1979-1992 and is current President of The Welsh Academy. His other works include Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve, Ask the Bloody Horse and Two For Joy. Dafydd ap Gwilym Grave of Dafydd Ap Gwilym at Strata Florida Abbey, Ceredigion The elusive 14th century poet. It is believed that he was born near Aberystwyth and spent some time in Newcastle Emlyn.

A charismatic man, he performed poems about love and nature and was very popular due to his ability to make fun of himself. He was buried at Strata Florida Abbey in Ceredigion and there is a memorial in the grounds dedicated to the man considered to be one of Europe’s most important poets of his day. Sarah Waters Born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire in 1966, Waters is best known as a lesbian-genre novelist. She has worked as an Associate Lecturer with the Open University. Her first four novels have been adapted for television, following the success of Andrew Davies's 2002 dramatisation of Tipping the Velvet for the BBC. Waters’ most recent novel, The Little Stranger is currently in development as a feature film. Caedmon: Recreating the Moment of Inspiration : NPR Eudora Welty reading in the studio. Caedmon hide caption toggle caption Caedmon In 1952, Barbara Holdridge and her best friend, Marianne Roney, had just graduated from college when they made a move that would forever change the literary world.

Looking for a way to get into the record business, the two young women heard that Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was due to give a public reading at New York's 92nd Street Y. They decided they would go and record him. This year is the 50th anniversary of Caedmon Records, the company Holdridge and Roney formed to record the spoken word performances of Thomas, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty and other famous writers. The idea was a catalyst for today's $2-billion audiobook industry. NPR's Renee Montagne reports for Morning Edition, that at the time Holdridge and Roney pursued Thomas, he was "at least as well known for his drinking as his writing." Holdridge, who was then Barbara Cohen, tells Montagne that she and Roney went to the Y and were "snobbily turned away by the usher, who said, 'Mr. Thomas will not see you.'" They signed a note with their first initials and last names so that Thomas "would have no inkling that we were women," Holdridge recalls.

"Little did we know he would have been extremely interested if he had known that we were young and unmarried." Article continues after sponsorship But the women persisted and finally did get in touch with Thomas. As Montagne reports, "Several missed recording studio appointments later, there stood Dylan Thomas, poems in hand. But not enough, it turned out, to fill a long-playing record. A catastrophe in the making, remembers Barbara Holdridge, since the B side had to have something on it, or they couldn't put out the record." They asked the poet if he had anything else he could record. Holdridge says: "He thought for a minute, and he said, 'Well, I did this story that was published in Harper's Bazaar that was a kind of Christmas story.'" It was "A Child's Christmas in Wales." They borrowed the only known file copy from the magazine. "That was dusting off something that undoubtedly would have remained buried and that became one of the most loved and popular stories recorded in the 20th century and certainly gave us the start that we needed to become a viable company," Holdridge says. She describes the Thomas recording as a "momentous" experience. "We had no idea of the power and beauty of this voice.

We just expected a poet with a poet's voice, but this was a full orchestral voice." Holdridge explains the goal of the Caedmon recordings. "We did not want to do a collection of great voices or important literary voices," she says. "We wanted them to read as though they were recreating the moment of inspiration. They did exactly that. They read with a feeling, an inspiration that came through." Today Caedmon Audio is part of HarperCollins. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Caedmon recordings, the publisher has released Dylan Thomas: The Caedmon Collection, which includes previously unavailable recordings. BBC Blogs - Wales - A Child’s Christmas in Wales A Child’s Christmas in Wales Friday 19 December 2014, 11:08 Read more about sharing. Dylan Thomas Forget the poetry and the dissolute behaviour, mention Dylan Thomas to anyone who is the slightest bit interested in literature, in literary biography or literary history and the chances are they will respond with ‘Under Milk Wood’ or ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’. The quality of Dylan’s play for voices is well known but, increasingly, ‘ A Child’s Christmas in Wales ’ is being seen as a wonderful piece of writing.

Because of its ability to conjure a time and a place when, as someone once said ‘All the world was young’, it is seen by many readers as the modern day equivalent of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Since its first appearance back in the 1940s, ‘A Child’s Christmas’ has grown in popularity and has become something of a symbol for the way Christmas and the Christmas season used to be celebrated – and maybe will be again – not just in Wales but across the whole world. Dylan Thomas had been writing radio scripts for some years when, in 1945, Lorraine Davies, producer of Children’s Hour in Wales, suggested he might like to come up with something on Christmas memories. Dylan duly wrote his essay; it was recorded in advance because producer Derek McCullough - Uncle Mac as children knew him - did not trust the unreliable Welsh poet, and it went out on the radio in time for the Christmas festivities. It was also published in ‘The Listener’. Some time later Dylan revised and enlarged the piece, using parts of another essay he’d written for ‘Picture Post’ to fill out space and ‘pad’ it a little.

In 1950 he sold it to the American magazine ‘Harper’s Bazaar’ for $300. During Dylan’s 1952 reading tour of America he recorded it for Caedmon Records, mainly because the poems he was going to recite did not fill the required space. He was paid $500 with royalties to be paid once sales had passed 1,000. Since then ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ has gone on to sell in the thousands. The piece has been published in book form and has been adapted for the stage, for animation and for television. Being relatively short it lends itself to good quality illustrations by people like Fritz Eichenberg and Edward Ardizzone – all part of building the icon that ‘A Child’s Christmas’ has now become. There is no single and clearly defined narrative structure to the story; Dylan relies on short cameos and character sketches to build an evocative picture of life in Swansea during the 1920s. He uses powerful descriptions and images so that when he writes about ‘fish-freezing waves’ or ‘the crackling sea’, the reader (or listener) is immediately transported back in time.

A Child's Christmas in Wales This is a romantic and sentimental picture of the Christmases we all had – or would like to have had – in the past and one that leaves us with a warm glow of contentment. Yet, even as we read the story, part of us knows that Christmas was never like this - not Dylan’s nor ours. The ability to suspend disbelief is the mark of a quality piece of writing and we believe Dylan’s version of Swansea Christmases partly because of the power of his prose and partly because we actually want to believe him. So although Dylan writes “It was always snowing at Christmas” the reality is that it wasn’t, not in Swansea during the 1920s at least. Maybe it did snow in Dylan’s memory or imagination but not in Swansea. However, so powerful is the image and so effective is the picture the writer draws that we believe them implicitly and bring them happily into our own lives. Most of us will swear that we can remember white Christmases with snow up to the letter box and all traffic suspended. “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is, quite simply, a picture of that world and of the childhood we all wanted.

When Caedmon first released the story on record back in 1952 it sold modestly – now it is probably second only to “Under Milk Wood' in terms of popularity and market sales. It is read and listened to all over the world but in Wales, in particular, the story has a special relevance. For the Welsh, “A Child’s Christmas” has become almost part of a ritual. The story is read each Christmas, much as Charles Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ or Clement Moore’s ‘The Night Before Christmas’ are read in the weeks and days leading up to 25 December. Just as most families have their traditions – decorating the house, listening to the Queen’s Speech, chestnuts roasting by the fire – reading ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ has become part of the ritual in many homes. Most Welsh writers have tried their hand at their own version of ‘A Child’s Christmas’, notably Richard Burton with his ‘A Christmas Story’. Dylan’s is a difficult act to follow, however, and no-one has really ever succeeded in emulating what is actually a unique and memorable achievement.

We all want a Christmas like Dylan had – or didn’t have, except in his imagination – and we are willing to put aside our doubts and cynicism in the face of his images and the power of his words. ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ has become an integral part of the Christmas experience, just like Clement Moore’s poem or Dickens’s ghost story. Beyond its Welsh context, it speaks to all mankind. This, then, is the ultimate tribute to a remarkable writer. Emlyn Williams reads an extract from A Child's Christmas in Wales (1958) Tagged with: 5 pleasures from 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' on the centennial of Dylan Thomas's birth - CSMonitor.com 5 pleasures from 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' on the centennial of Dylan Thomas's birth Latest News 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' by Dylan Thomas has become a classic of the season. View Caption View Caption of Millions of people around the world are opening Christmas presents today, but the holiday really doesn’t depend on elaborate gifts to bring its joy.

Just ask poet Dylan Thomas , who continues to speak, more than a half a century after his death, from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales ,” a classic yuletide story getting an even higher profile this year because 2014 marks the centennial of Thomas’s birth. He was born 100 years ago this year – on Oct. 27, 1914 – in the Welsh coastal community of Swansea. One of the great pleasures of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” is that it doesn’t preach, doesn’t really insist on anything as high-minded as a moral. But read this slender book attentively, and you’ll notice that toys and trinkets, although they make bright cameos in the story, aren’t central to the narrative. The biggest smiles come from the Christmas companionship of friends, neighbors, and extended family. Recommended: Poetry quiz: Can you match the poet to the poem? Many families honor Christmas each year by reading “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” aloud. Thomas himself would probably be surprised by the story’s longevity. He did not, after all, seem intent on crafting a classic when set his yuletide memories on paper.

Photos of the Day Photos of the Day 01/17 Thomas was a brilliant poet, but a troubled one. He drank too much, compromised his health, and died much too early on Nov. 9, 1953 in New York City, where he’d initially gone to conduct some poetry readings to pay his bills. He didn’t merely recite poetry; he performed it, establishing a standard for poetry readings that many contemporary poets continue to follow. Thomas is best known for “Do not go gentle into that good night,” a poem about his dying father that tellingly anticipated the poet’s own passing. But “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a small prose work, finds Thomas on happier terms. One gathers that he wasn’t really trying to speak to the ages when he wrote it; he was, rather, answering a couple of quick assignments to earn some cash. The offhand flavor of the book is, in fact, its principal charm.

“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” was originally two pieces – a BBC radio broadcast called “Memories of Christmas,” and a magazine article for Picture Post called “Conversation About Christmas.” He later stitched both compositions into a single essay for Harper’s Bazaar, “A Child’s Memories of Christmas in Wales.” That essay became the posthumously published book we now know as “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” Nothing much happens in the book – at least nothing so dramatic as a Scrooge reforming his soul, or a boy pining away for a Red Ryder BB gun. It’s really an assortment of observations filtered through memory, but what Thomas captures beautifully is the dreamlike quality of Christmases past – how they seem equal parts personal history and fevered imagination. That aspect of the book seems most fully realized in the 2004 Candlewick Press edition of the book, still in print, which includes the sublimely surreal illustrations of Chris Raschka. Try to get a copy of the Candlewick version at an after-Christmas sale if your house doesn’t already have its own copy of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales.” In the meantime, here are five passages from the Thomas narrative.

Thomas knew that the best gift of the season – and any season – is a story well told. And that, courtesy of Thomas, is our gift to you today: 1) “One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now ... out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.” 2) “All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.” 3) “It was always snowing at Christmas.

December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers.” 4) “For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept.” 5) "Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and I then slept." Next up Get the Monitor stories you care about delivered to your inbox. Daily 1000+ images about A Child's Christmas in Wales on Pinterest | TVs, Children and A child I reread all my favourite Christmas stories during the holiday season: A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas See More

Question: Which British poet wrote ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’?
Answer: Dylan Thomas