This book celebrates the special relationship between beloved British dogs and their devoted owners. Architects, fashion designers, florists, entrepreneurs - these and the other famous, creative and hyper-successful people have one thing in common when it comes to their canines: the strength of the bond between human and four-legged friend. This makes for tales of companionship that will be sure to uplift your spirits and make the heart sing. Exuberantly photographed by Dylan Thomas, with interviews by Poodle-mad Georgina Montagu, Top Dogs is a joyous read and lustrous eye-candy for dog lovers. From Jacobean manor to Cumbrian hill farm, and circus wagon to royal residence, the lucky hounds who are showcased in this sumptuous volume occupy some of the loveliest homes in the country.

Living Tradition: The Architecture and Urbanism of Hugh Petter celebrates the exceptional professional achievement of one of the world's leading traditional architects. It showcases recent highlights from Hugh's award-winning portfolio, including handsome new country houses; major alterations and refurbishment of historic buildings; a significant new building for Trinity College in Oxford; and commercial development at all scales with landed estates across the UK and beyond. His pioneering work as masterplanner for the Duchy of Cornwall is regularly cited as an exemplar of a community that reflects local identity. Written by Clive Aslet, with a foreword by The Former Prince of Wales, this book reveals how a series of iconic buildings came to be. Richly illustrated with newly commissioned photography by Dylan Thomas, one of Britain's foremost photographers of architecture and interiors, this book reveals the working process of the architect. Common to all the buildings in this book - whether a new or historic private house, a public building, or a masterwork of urban design - is a loving attention to detail and materials, and an architect who cares deeply for his craft.

We are not wholly bad or good Who live our lives under Milk Wood And Thou, I know, wilt be the first To see our best side, not our worst. In this enchanting illustrated adaptation, Cerys Matthews brings Dylan Thomas's beloved classic to new life. This is a bedtime story like no other; a book to be treasured by many generations; a book for babies and old men alike, for all that are young at heart. Welcome to the small seaside town of Llareggub. Here you will find dreamers, workers, singers, sinners, the young, old, blue, bold and a mix of all inbetween. Here you will meet Captain Cat and Rosie Probert, Mr Organ Morgan and Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Nogood Boyo, Mog and Myfanwy. Here you will watch a day in their lives play out - from a dark, moonless night to a morning that is busy as bees; from a sunny, slow lulling afternoon to a deep, drifting dusk. So, to begin at the beginning . . .

'It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' Under Milk Wood tells the story of a Welsh village during one spring day. It is populated by some of the best-loved characters in British literature. Lyrical, funny, moving, it is rooted in place but with a universality that has spoken to generations of readers. A Welsh epic, a work of poetic genius, a modern classic. 'A tour de force of oral poetry which oozes word pictures and onomatopoeic musicality' Guardian

This book is a sumptuously produced journey around twelve privately owned country houses, asking what it is like to live in such places today. What role do they play in the twenty-first century? For many years after the Second World War, the country house was struggling. Now a new generation of young owners, often with children, has taken over. They're finding innovative ways to live in these ancient, fragile and poetic places. While they treasure the history and beauty of the houses, they're also adapting and enhancing them for a modern era. Old Homes, New Life is a behind-the-scenes account of today's aristocracy, as they reinvent the country house way of life. Each family does this in its own way, maintaining the tradition of individualism, even eccentricity, which is so much associated with country houses. Dylan Thomas's superb yet intimate photographs capture both the inhabitants of these houses and the spaces they occupy - from State dining to family kitchen, walled garden to attic. This feast for the eyes is accompanied by an equally mouth-watering text by Clive Aslet, based on interviews with family members and his long experience of the subject through his years as Editor of Country Life. The result is an exclusive tour of a dozen spectacular homes.

The bridge has always stood as a transitional structure - not purely a work of engineering, nor simply a work of architecture. Its functional requirements are more stringent than those of the average building; it not only must stand up; it must stand up, support those who cross it, and effectively span the space over which it stands. As Samuel Johnson said, "the first excellence of a bridge is strength ... for a bridge that cannot stand, however beautiful, will boast its beauty but a little while." The Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-92) understood these precepts well, continually building bridges that were not just structurally sound, but also aesthetically pleasing. Unlike his contemporaries, Adam did not view bridges as mere skeletons upon which to apply ornament. Rather, he sought to achieve architectural totality, incorporating his bridge designs into greater architectural programs, thereby producing aesthetically pleasing and contextually specific designs. From the Pulteney Bridge in Bath to the ruined arch and viaduct at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour will take the reader across Britain, shedding new light on an understudied aspect of the great architect's career.

This gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old for over half a century and is now a modern classic. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captures a child's-eye view and an adult's fond memories of a magical time of presents, aunts and uncles, the frozen sea, and in the best of circumstances, newly fallen snow.

This gem of lyric prose has enchanted both young and old for over half a century and is now a modern classic. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), one of the greatest poets and storytellers of the twentieth century, captures a child's-eye view and an adult's fond memories of a magical time of presents, aunts and uncles, the frozen sea, and in the best of circumstances, newly fallen snow.

'To begin at the beginning: it is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black...' When Richard Burton breathed the opening words of Under Milk Wood into a microphone, broadcasting history was made. For this 'play for voices' conjures up the intimate dreams and waking lives of the inhabitants of a Welsh seaside village in a remarkable way. It is bawdy and beautiful; its colourful characters lust and love, gossip and fantasise. Through the magic of language, Under Milk Wood creates a rich modern pastoral which, once heard, touches the listener with its poetry and haunts the imagination for ever. This radio drama is the completed version broadcast in 1963 which includes several passages that were omitted from the first recording in 1954. 2 CDs. 1 hr 41 mins.

Commissioned by the BBC, and described by Dylan Thomas as 'a play for voices', UNDER MILK WOOD takes the form of an emotive and hilarious account of a spring day in the fictional Welsh seaside village of Llareggub. We learn of the inhabitants' dreams and desires, their loves and regrets. The play introduces us to characters such as Captain Cat who dreams of his drowned former seafellows and Nogood Boyo who dreams of nothing at all. It is a unique and touching depiction of a village that has 'fallen head over bells in love'. The First Voice narration reveals the ordinary world of daily happenings and events, while the Second Voice conveys the intimate, innermost thoughts of the fascinating folk of Llareggub. There have been myriad productions of UNDER MILK WOOD over the years and Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Elizabeth Taylor, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Tom Jones have all starred in radio, stage or film adaptations. Dylan Thomas's classic radio play reprinted to celebrate the centenary of his birth. A true masterpiece that has never been out of print.

All Dylan Thomas' major works gathered together and featuring a bold new livery in celebration of the Dylan Thomas centenary. A rich collection of Dylan Thomas' best-loved poems and stories, such as PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG DOG, and pieces he wrote for radio and magazines, including the celebrated radio play UNDER MILK WOOD. The DYLAN THOMAS OMNIBUS highlights the full range and genius of this tempestuous and meticulous artist.

The reputation of Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century has not waned in the fifty years since his death. A Welshman with a passion for the English language, Thomas s singular poetic voice has been admired and imitated, but never matched.

This exciting, newly edited annotated edition offers a more complete and representative collection of Dylan Thomas s poetic works than any previous edition. Edited by leading Dylan Thomas scholar John Goodby from the University of Swansea, The Poems of Dylan Thomas contains all the poems that appeared in Collected Poems 1934-1952, edited by Dylan Thomas himself, as well as poems from the 1930-1934 notebooks and poems from letters, amatory verses, occasional poems, the verse film script for Our Country, and poems that appear in his radio play for voices, Under Milk Wood. Showing the broad range of Dylan Thomas s oeuvre as never before, this new edition places Thomas in the twenty-first century, with an up-to-date introduction by Goodby whose notes and annotations take a pluralistic approach."

In England and America Dylan Thomas made his art and personality widely known through public readings, radio broadcasts and recordings. Many of the 25 short stories, autobiographical sketches and essays in Quite Early One Morning, a volume planned by Thomas shortly before his death, were read by him on such occasions. They are alive with his verbal magic, his intense perception of life, his gargantuan humor and with the very ring of his voice. Included in this collection of prose pieces are such favorites as the hilarious "A Visit to America," the account of a small boy's marvelous day's outing--"A Story," and the memorable "A Child's Christmas in Wales" which has been called 'the twentieth century Christmas Carol.' Other pieces show Thomas's power as a sensitive critic of poetry and as an exponent of his own intent as a poet.

This gathering of all Dylan Thomas’s stories—ranging chronologically from the dark, almost surrealistic tales of Thomas’s youth to such gloriously rumbustious celebrations of life as “A Child’s Christmas in Wales� and “Adventures in the Skin Trade�—charts the progress of “The Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive� toward his mastery of the comic idiom. Here, too, are stories originally written for radio and television and, in a short appendix, the schoolboy pieces first published in the Swansea Grammar School Magazine. A high point of the collection is Thomas’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog,� a vivid collage of memories from his Swansea childhood that combines the lyricism of his poetry with the sparkle and sly humor of Under Milk Wood. Also here is the fiction from Quite Early One Morning, a collection planned by Thomas shortly before his death. Altogether there are more than forty stories, providing a rich and varied literary feast and showing Dylan Thomas in all his intriguing variety–somber fantasist, joyous word-spinner, and irrepressible comedian of smalltown Wales. 

Between May 1930 and August 1935, Dylan Thomas kept numerous notebooks of poems. They contain the drafts of almost all of the work that would form his first two reputation-making collections, 18 Poems (1934) and Twenty-five Poems (1936), and many of those in his third collection, The Map of Love (1939). Thomas sold four of the notebooks, spanning May 1930 to May 1934, to the University of Buffalo in 1941. However, the existence of a fifth notebook, covering the period June 1934 to August 1935, was unknown until 2014, the centenary of his birth. The Fifth Notebook of Dylan Thomas makes this newly-discovered text available to readers and researchers for the first time. It contains the only existing MSS versions of Thomas's most challenging poems, 'I, in my intricate image' and 'Altarwise by owl-light', and fourteen other early poems. It contains facsimiles and full transcripts of the originals, is annotated throughout, and has a full scholarly introduction. Exploring the contexts of these brilliant and experimental lyrics - many with substantial reworkings and variant passages - this landmark publication sheds new light on the creative practice of one of the most important and well-known poets of the twentieth century.

The definitive edition of Dylan Thomas's five published volumes of poems: 18 POEMS, TWENTY-FIVE POEMS, THE MAP OF LOVE, DEATHS AND ENTRANCES and IN COUNTRY SLEEP. Dylan Thomas wrote passionately about life in all its moods and moments: from the first thrilling moments of childbirth to the darker moments of death and loss. COLLECTED POEMS is introduced by the poet himself with a passionate seashore 'Prologue', in which the self-styled Noah of poetry builds his ark against ruin. This edition includes his last, unfinished poem 'Elegy', and the opening of 'In Country Heaven' - an ambitious project conceived after the dropping of the atom bomb.

First the young schoolboy, gloriously immersed in make-believe in a shabby farmyard; then the budding poet with his thrilling friendships and dreams of fortune. Finally, the neophyte reporter roaming suburban Swansea for momentous material. In ten wonderfully evocative short stories, Dylan Thomas conveys the exuberance and enthusiasm of youth as he fictionalises events from his childhood. Adolescent sexuality and male friendship are two of the themes that pervade this collection, along with the more familiar topics of love, death and religion. Featuring a bold new livery in celebration of the Dylan Thomas centenary.

Dylan Thomas's classic account of his childhood Christmases, with full colour illustrations by Peter Bailey. The special gift edition for Thomas's centenary now in paperback, with a beautiful gold-foiled cover. All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street... Dylan Thomas's lyrical account of his childhood Christmases in a small Welsh town, featuring wolves, bears, hippos and Mrs Prothero's cat, has become deservedly famous. This re-designed edition celebrates the centenary of his birth, and features full colour artwork from illustrator Peter Bailey. A beautiful gift edition of a classic work from one of Britain's best-loved writers, this is the perfect Christmas present for young readers building their own childhood Christmas memories.