On Friday 3rd March, Hilly Jane’s photo book of Dylan Thomas’ 1950s Swansea Ugly, Lovely will be launched in London at the Welsh Art Week London in conversation with arts journalist Jasper Rees.
Writing for The Lady, Rebecca Wallersteiner has recommended the publication as a 'fascinating' and 'enchanting' coffee-table book, which creates an atmospheric documentation of the people and places that inspired Thomas. In addition to the publication of Dylan Thomas’ play let, Lunch at Mussolini’s, a 1950s photo album made by Jane’s aunt, Ethel Ross, depicting the place Dylan Thomas wove into his work in Swansea and Carmarthenshire will be added to compliment the first UK addition.This engaging book, which brings together Dylan Thomas’s haunts and writing, also includes a satirical sketch previously unpublished in the UK, written by Dylan Thomas as a commentary on fascism.
Also participating will be Professor Dai Smith appearing at the Welsh Art Week London 2017. All of the events will be held at the Woolff Gallery 89 Charlotte Street W1. The show will continue all week from today, Monday 27 Feb 10am – 6pm,every day except Saturday which will be 10am – 3pm.
To launch the event at tonight’s opening, Professor Dai Smith CBE will discuss his new fictional work, What I Know I Cannot Say/All That Lies Beneath, from 6-8pm.
Dai Smith takes the reader on a tour of the South Wales Valleys during the twentieth century, he uses a variation of novella and short stories to create a dazzling fictional synthesis. The novel picks up where his 2013 novel Dream On left off, following the life story of Billy’s father, Dai Maddox, moving from the heyday of the pre-mechanised coal industry to the present day. Dai’s journey is emotional and moving, told in gritty, realistic prose. All That Lies Beneath twists the fictional elements of power, sex, money, and ambition throughout the pages, using both intellectual and psychical provocation, sending a shudder of fearful recognition directly through the reader.
