After the recent centenary of Dylan Thomas’s birth, Dalrymple considers the life and work of the man he calls “one of the last thoroughgoing bohemians”. Was he a scoundrel, a grifter, a liar and a cheat? Yes to all. But make no mistake: he was truly a literary genius:

…few are the twentieth-century English poets who wrote lines that not only were memorable but that also make the soul vibrate. Thomas was one of them.