Dylan Thomas: the Biography by Paul Ferris (Phoenix, £8.99 in UK)

Paul Ferris's biography originally came out in 1977, but this edition adds new material and is also much more outspoken about Caitlin Thomas and her ambivalent role - presumably because she is now dead and can cause no more trouble. She was, quite plainly, a major source of strife and tension in their life together, though Thomas was rather a hopeless, undomesticated husband who never could earn a decent living. The Constantine FitzGibbon biography is more intimate and affectionate, since FitzGibbon knew the poet well personally. Ferris, however, is more scholarly and also has the advantage of hindsight. Thomas's drying-up as a writer in his last years makes painful reading, especially since it drove him more and more into the heavy drinking which became a set pattern in the end.