Nevertheless Dylan lives. The centenary of his birth has been extensively celebrated in Wales and there was a festival in Fitzrovia last week. His poetry is still popular, and perhaps more easily understood now than when it was written. It doesn’t always make easy sense, but the sound is marvellous, the imagery sparkles. After his death some suggested he was already written out and his fear that this was indeed the case was a cause of his alcoholism. Caitlin, who knew him better than anyone, disagreed. Poems, she said, were taking him longer to write, but they were good poems, better than the early work which made him famous. He was moving from romantic rhetoric towards a new simplicity. Moreover, he had finished his Play for Voices, Under Milk Wood. Its success was immediate and has been sustained; royalties from performances have never stopped rolling in to the Dylan Thomas estate.