THE latest book from Cardiff publisher Merton Priory Press recaptures Laugharne 50 years ago when Dylan and Caitlin Thomas were among the town's best known personalities.
After the Second World War, Phyllis Bowen, the daughter of Hopkin Morgan, owner of a large bakery business in Pontypridd, moved with her husband to Laugharne Castle House (where they succeeded novelist Richard Hughes as tenants) where they knew Dylan and Caitlin well.
After she was widowed, Mrs. Bowen moved back to south-east Wales, where she became a well-known figure in the arts world. At her death in 1999, she bequeathed an important still-life by Sir Cedric Morris, 'Helen's Pot' to the National Museums and Galleries of Wales.
Before she died, Phyllis tape-recorded her recollections. As well as new insights into Dylan Thomas at Laugharne, these include a fascinating picture of growing up in Edwardian Pontypridd in a house with at least three maids, schooldays at Roedean during the First World War (when a lifelong admirer dropped her a message from his airship), and broadcasting on the BBC Welsh Service from the original Cardiff studio in Park Place in the 1920s.
Among other adventures in later life, Mrs. Bowen lectured on family planning in Finland in the 1950s and travelled several times to Thailand, where she came to know the Royal Family.
Phyllis Bowen's memoirs, 'The Baker's Daughter', edited by Lisbeth David, of Llandaff, who like Phyllis served in the WRNS during the war, will be published by Merton at £14.95 on October 14, with a launching party at Turner House Gallery, Penarth, at which family and friends will remember a remarkable woman.