Dylan Thomas lost the Under Milk Wood manuscript in a Soho pub, his producer found it and sold it for £2,000, and his widow Caitlin lost her suit to get it back

Dylan Thomas lost his Under Milk Wood manuscript in a Cardiff hotel in March 1953 and got it back. In October 1953 he lost the finished original in a Soho pub. On 19 October 1953, at Victoria in London, he gave BBC producer Douglas Cleverdon three copies, named pubs where the original might be, and told him he could keep it if he found it. Cleverdon found it a day or two later; the LRB names the Swiss Tavern in Old Compton Street, another account names the French House. Thomas died in New York on 9 November 1953, aged 39. His estate went into a trust, the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas, run by his friend Daniel Jones, his agent David Higham and his solicitor Stuart Thomas, to pay income to his widow Caitlin and their three children. Her relations with the trustees were bad. In 1961 Cleverdon sold the manuscript to the Times Book Company for £2,000. Caitlin sued for it, arguing she had inherited all her husband's possessions. In Thomas v Times Book Co (1966) Mr Justice Plowman held that Thomas had made Cleverdon a valid gift, and that telling him where to look was enough to deliver it. The Rosenbach in Philadelphia bought the manuscript from the Phoenix Book Shop in 1968, and it is there in 2026.