Dylan Thomas House Rescuers to meet President Jimmy Carter

President Carter is a lifelong Dylan Thomas fan

5 Cwmdonkin Drive

The former US President Jimmy Carter is to introduce a new audio visual tour for the birthplace of Dylan Thomas at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive in the Uplands suburb of Swansea, which has been lovingly restored by a local couple Anne and Geoff Haden.

President Carter is a lifelong Dylan Thomas fan who was instrumental in a memorial plaque being erected in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1982 and sent a message of support to the couple when they embarked on the three year restoration project in 2005.

The couple are to meet with President Carter at the Carter Center in Atlanta to record an interview.

They will also present President Carter with a bust of Dylan by the sculptor Peter Nicholas, made in preparation for a full size statue of the young Dylan that will be erected close to his birthplace before Dylan's centenary in 2014.

From Atlanta they travel to New York to visit places made famous by Dylan before his early death in the city at the age of 39 where they will discuss the potential for a second statue of Dylan to be erected in Central Park or Greenwich Village.

Enjoy a guided tour of Dylan Thomas' Birth House

Before the couple began the restoration, the house had gone through a 20 year history of being used as student accommodation and suffered from a number of structural problems, which posed a threat to its future existence.

The house is now open for tours and short break stays but Anne Haden is keen to point out:

"This is not a museum but a living house in a lovely area where people can explore, enjoy and perhaps be inspired by Dylan. We organise events in the house and there is nothing better than when it is full of words, people and music."

President Carter visited Dylan's home city of Swansea in 1995 and, as part of the UK Year of Literature, opened Ty Llyn (Writer's House) that is now the Dylan Thomas Centre but has yet to visit the birthplace.

Perhaps the most controversial moment of President Carter's otherwise triumphant tour of England in 1977 came when he spoke out passionately on behalf of Dylan Thomas at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

At the place where many of Britain's late, great literati are buried or commemorated, the President expressed the hope that his favourite poet might one day be recognised there.

Five years later, in 1982, the memorial plaque to Dylan Thomas was erected in the Abbey and a memorial service is held each year on the Saturday closest to the date of his death - 9th November.

In 1995 after opening the Ty Llyn (Writers' House) as part of the UK Year of Literature, President Carter visited the quaint seaside town of Laugharne and the Boathouse where Dylan lived for the last four years of his life.

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