Dylan Thomas: 27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953

'My birthday began with the water-

Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name

Above the farms and the white horses

And I rose

In a rainy autumn'

From ‘Poem in October’

From ‘Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices’

First broadcast 25 January 1954.

‘And the shrill girls giggle and master around him and squeal as they clutch and thrash, and he blubbers away downhill with his patched pants falling, and his tear-splashed blush burns all the way as the triumphant bird-like sisters scream with buttons in their claws and the bully brothers hoot after him his little nickname and his mother's shame and his father's wickedness with the loose wild barefoot women of the hovels of the hills. It all means nothing at all, and, howling for his milky mum, for her cawl and buttermilk and cowbreath and welshcakes and the fat birth-smelling bed and moonlit kitchen of her arms, he'll never forget as he paddles blind home through the weeping end of the world.

Then his tormentors tussle and run to the Cockle Street sweet-shop, their pennies sticky as honey, to buy from Miss Myfanwy Price, who is cocky and neat as a puff-bosomed robin and her small round buttocks tight as ticks, gobstoppers big as wens that rainbow as you suck, brandyballs, winegums, hundreds and thousands, liquorice sweet as sick, nougat to tug and ribbon out like another red rubbery tongue, gum to glue in girls' curls, crimson coughdrops to spit blood, ice-cream comets, dandelion-and-burdock, raspberry and cherryade, pop goes the weasel and the wind.’

Welshcakes

8oz plain flour

1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/4tsp mixed spice

2 oz butter

2oz lard

1 egg

handful of dried fruit

milk,

3oz caster sugar

extra butter, for greasing

Rub the fat into the sieved flour, salt, b.p. and spices. Add the sugar, dried fruit and the egg. Mix to form a ball of soft dough, using a splash of milk if needed.

Roll out the mixture until it is a about 1cm thick and cut into rounds.

Heat a bakestone or a heavy frying pan. Rub it with lard or butter and wipe the excess away.

Place the Welshcakes on the griddle, turning once. They need about 2-3 minutes each side. Each side needs to be caramel brown before turning.

Remove from the pan and dust with caster sugar while still warm.

'Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'

From 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.'