Letter: What killed Dylan

Sir: About that Nashold/Tremlett book, which "reveals" that Dylan Thomas didn't die of drink (report, 13 October). This was discovered twenty years ago; by me. Half a grain of morphine unwisely prescribed in New York did for him. The "acute alcohol poisoning" story hasn't been taken seriously for years.

Nashold and Tremlett produce evidence that he was a diabetic. Maybe he was. Constantine FitzGibbon's biography speculated about it in 1965. What matters is the despair Thomas came to feel about his poetry and his marriage, so that in the end he put himself in the way of dying, one way or another.

PAUL FERRIS

Boughrood, Powys