Dylan Thomas and his Persian adventure

Dylan Thomas (Image: The Times)

Swansea-born Dylan Thomas will always be one of the world's most cherished poets of the 20th Century. His life was massively cut short at 39 in 1953, but almost three years before that, he was tasked with writing promotional material for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, known today as BP.

Professionally, Thomas's trip to Iran in January 1951 was unremarkable. In fact, he wrote the scripts in five weeks and the film itself initially was cancelled due to 'political reasons', until three months later when it appeared on the BBC Home Service.

During his five weeks stay, he toured a large part of the Middle East, but based himself in Tehran. He also visited Abadan, Ahwaz, Isfahan and Shiraz.

However, Thomas did take advantage of time to himself in Iran by trying to keep his marriage alive. In the months previous, it was reported that he had an affair with Harper Bazaar magazine executive Pearl Kazin. His wife of 13 years Caitlin MacNamara found out from Thomas's patroness, Margaret Taylor. It is fair to say that Caitlin sent her husband in the doghouse.

According to reports, during his five week Middle East tour, Dylan Thomas wrote four letters to his wife; mainly to profusely apologise. But these letters also revealed his time in Iran, giving us a flavour of what he did other than write promotional materials for a major oil company.

His language in these letters were straight to the point, as was his poetry. You could tell what he didn't like - the 'horrible oilmen' for example, and that he was guided to 'endless museums, palaces, libraries, court of law and houses of parliament' that made his 'boredom bleed'. Perhaps the organisers of these tours did not research his politics before sending him to these places.

He also commented on the poverty in Tehran - the 'dirty and wretched clothing' by the masses, and that the poor got their running water from the 'public gutter'. The rich and poor gap got to him: 'I had lunch with a man worth 30,000,000 pounds, from the rents of peasants all over Iran, & from a thousand crooked deals. A charming, cultivated man,' he would write. Of course, he also wouldn't fail to mention alcohol, or lack of any he could find - and if he did, the price of it was too much for him to afford.

Among all the imagery of negatives, he did love the bazaars - they were like 'all the bits of film one’s ever seen … smelling of incense and carpets and food and poverty,' he would remark. He described Abadan as an 'evergreen, gardened, cypressed, cinema’d, oil-tanked, boulevarded, incense-and-armpit cradle of Persian culture.'

You may not think that Dylan Thomas enjoyed his stay in Iran but believe-it-or-not, he did. One of his highlights was befriending filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan. Golestan's autobiography, recently translated into English, revealed their friendship in greater detail, detailing how they met in rather humorous fashion ('Are you related to 'Daylon' Thomas?' 'Dylan, I am Dylan Thomas'), the history of both Iran and Britain, and the work of Hafiz, to which Mr Thomas did not hear of until his first conversation with Golestan. Lots of appreciation should go to Professor John Goodby of Swansea University for sourcing all this information.

Dylan Thomas's reflections of Iran is mirrored to what was believed to be true at that time. Iran in the early 1950s saw great turbulence. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had only just survived an assassination attempt in 1949 and as a result, wanted to get the monarchy that much closer to Persian politics and did what he could to gain more power. In doing so, he got then Prime Minister Mohammad Mossedegh to form the National Front, who were leading in the polls as Thomas visited. That Party's election win later in 1951 created great divide in the country.

In addition to this, as Thomas arrived, working for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the organisation was starting to go through a highly controversial nationalisation programme, meaning that Iran would cease UK shares. Abadan was at the centre of this drama. As a result of all of this, the diplomatic battle between Britain and Iran, plus the fallout of the Shah's greater involvement in political affairs, had a detrimental impact on the latter's economy - the country's GDP was only just in line with the average GDP of a so-called 'Developing Country' (at around $1,100 per annum, while inflation was at nearly 10%). It wasn't until a couple of years after Thomas's passing that Iran's economy started to grow.

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