Under Milk Wood

Image: Dylan Thomas at the BBC, 1948.

From its famous opening words ("To begin at the beginning…") spoken by the young Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas's 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood was a milestone of BBC radio broadcasting, revealing the seething hidden lives of a small Welsh village Llareggub in language that was fresh, exciting and revelatory.

Thomas had worked on-and-off creating the play for nearly 20 years, formulating ideas and characters influenced by his upbringing in Wales, and found the process draining. After a stage run-through in New York in May 1953 he wrote to his wife Caitlin 'I've finished that infernally eternally unfinished "Play" & have done it in New York with actors.'

The author never got to hear the BBC Radio premiere with a Welsh cast, which included his friend Richard Burton as the omniscient narrator, nor its subsequent adaptations for stage and screen; Thomas died of alcohol poisoning in New York on 9th November 1953 aged 39.

East London schoolchildren create their version of Under Milk Wood

25 January 2019 saw the 65th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s famous audio ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood.

School children from Mile End and Bethnal Green have taken on the same challenge of painting a picture of a place in audio. It is supported by photos of some of the key places that have inspired them: from the local corner shop and the parade of urban characters closely observed in local streets to a bench in a park which is the place for snippets of intimate conversation.

They have worked with poet Miriam Nash from Ministry of Stories on text creation, with support from colleagues in BBC History and BBC Radio to transform the children’s words into a professional piece of audio.

Here is the result: a brand new soundscape called Round About Candle Street. It featured on BBC London’s Robert Elms Show on 24 January 2019.

For any school or young writers group that would like to do the same, Ministry of Stories has produced a helpful ‘How to’ education pack.

Robert Seatter, Head of BBC History said: "It has been great working with these young writers from East London, to take the spirit of Dylan Thomas’s great radio piece and reinvent it for a current generation. Their words are fresh, surprising and all their own – I am sure that Thomas would have approved!".