George Tremlett on Dylan and Caitlin Thomas

The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

George Tremlett (born 1939) is an English author, bookshop owner, and former politician.

According to his own biography, after leaving King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, he worked for the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1957 onward as a TV columnist and pop music reviewer. In 1961 he became a freelance rock journalist and in the 1970s wrote a series of paperbacks on pop stars, including The David Bowie Story, the first bio of the musician.

He is a biographer of Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin. He interviewed Caitlin at her home in Catalonia for the book Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas. He has argued that Thomas was "the first rock star." In 1997 he published a book with James Nashold, The Death of Dylan Thomas, which claimed that Thomas' death was not due to alcohol poisoning but to a mistake by Thomas' physician in prescribing cortisone, morphine and benzedrine when Thomas was actually in a diabetic coma.

Tremlett runs the Corran Bookshop in Laugharne, Wales "a shrine to the poet"; has since 1982. The shop offers tourist information...and it's where I met George to have this conversation.