Is it ever okay to copy someone's work?

The number one rule of school, before wearing your uniform correctly and not running in corridors, is one that everyone knows; don't cheat.

You'd think that our best-known writers throughout history would know it too, but according to researchers, one poet didn't seem to get the memo back when he was at school.

According to an author who's been studying the history of Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet often copied other children's poems and passed them off as his own.

Writer Alessandro Gallenzi made the shock discovery while he putting together a book of Thomas' work.

He said that 11-year-old Thomas joined the Swansea Grammar School magazine and contributed lots of poems to it, but Gallenzi says he then found many instances where Thomas' poems had actually been written earlier - by other people - and published in other magazines.

And Gallenzi thinks he may have done this to impress his dad, who ran the school magazine.

We want to know - do you think it's ever okay to copy someone else's work? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea on 27 October 1914.

He began writing while Swansea Grammar School. His father worked there, and ran the school's magazine, which Thomas often contributed to.

When Dylan Thomas got older became a journalist, and started working at the Swansea Daily Post.

He moved to London in 1934, when his first poetry collection was published, and went on to write more world-renowned poems and plays such as Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, and Under Milk Wood.

One of the poems Dylan Thomas is accused of copying is His Repertoire, supposedly written when he was 12 years old. According to Gallenzi it is a copy of The Only Piece He Knew, by Archibald JA Wilson.

In fact, Gallenzi said he and his team had confirmed plagiarism (which means copying) in 12 poems published between December 1926 and July 1931, but that he suspected there were 12 more.

Gallenzi told The Times Newspaper: "He had not simply drawn inspiration from other texts, imitated or parodied them, as he later claimed; he had stolen the work of other authors wholesale, at times changing the title or a few words, perhaps to dodge detection."

These 24 poems will be published by Alma Books later this month, in a new anthology - or collection - of Thomas' work.

The section will be called The Plagiarised and Dubious Poems.

As for why Thomas resorted to copying his classmates work, Gallenzi believed it was because he was trying to impress his father.

He told The Times: "It could have been a way to gain recognition, first and foremost from his father, a master of English, who was a severe man."

So is it ever ok to copy someone's work? What do you think about copying?

Let us know in the comments!