A collection of early photographs of Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin, taken by Nora Summers, forms the latest exhibition on the walls of the Poetry Café in Covent Garden, London. In the spring of 1936, Dylan Thomas was introduced to Caitlin Macnamara in a Fitzrovia pub, the Wheatsheaf. He was 21, and an already established poet. She was nearly a year older with ambitions to be a dancer. Just over a year later, the two were married.

 Virtually penniless, the couple spent the first weeks of married life with his parents in Wales before moving to New Inn House at Blashford in Hampshire, the home of Caitlin’s mother, Yvonne Macnamara. Nora Summers, a close family friend and also Yvonne’s lover, was a trained artist and a keen photographer. Her photographs of Dylan and Caitlin offer a glimpse of their life together and her portraits of Dylan were among the poet’s favourites of himself.

The Poetry Society exhibition, ‘Dylan and Caitlin’s World’, marks the end of Dylan Thomas’s birth centenary year, and is on show in the Poetry Café, 22 Betterton Street, London until 17 January 2015.

Dylan Thomas and the Bohemians, The Photographs of Nora Summers by Gabriel Summers and Leonie Summers with Jeff Towns, is newly published by Parthian Press. Priced £20, it is available for purchase in the Poetry Society Café, London. Gabriel Summers is a painter, collector and researcher, and is the grandson of Nora Summers. Leonie Summers is an art historian, editor and researcher.

PHOTOGRAPH: Dylan and Caitlin, Blashford, 1937, by Nora Summers. © Gabriel and Leonie Summers