Success, ‘disillusion and experiment’

The success of Deaths and Entrances, published in February 1946, marked the beginning of Thomas's popular reputation as a poet, building as it did on his reputation as a broadcaster, which had been steadily growing since 1943. A first print run of 3,000 copies sold out within a month, and sales were matched by widespread critical acclaim. In his fourth collection, the visionary modernist strain of British poetry that Thomas had pioneered achieved an apocalyptic and neo-Romantic apotheosis. Its variousness – a mixture of war elegy, pastoral, love lyric and childhood reminiscence – perfectly expressed the conflicted post-war mood of loss, trepidation and hope on the eve of the peaceful social revolution represented by the vote for Attlee's Labour Party against the war leader, Churchill, and the subsequent creation of the Welfare State. Not long afterwards, in the autumn of 1946, the BBC launched its cultural network, the Third Programme. The demand for Thomas as both an actor and writer increased, and he displayed a natural affinity for the medium in both capacities. He became a household name, and his appeal continued unabated until the time of his death in 1953.

Against this, by late 1945, life in London's Fitzrovian bohemia had brought Thomas close to the point of physical collapse. After a brief period of hospitalisation, in early 1946, he moved with his family from London to rural Oxfordshire, where they lived until moving to Laugharne in rural Carmarthenshire in May 1949. Although based in the country, Thomas continued to make his living in radio and film – work which entailed regular sorties to the capital.