Jul 8, 2014

George Tremlett (born 1939) is an English author, bookshop owner, and former politician.

According to his own biography, after leaving King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon, he worked for the Coventry Evening Telegraph from 1957 onward as a TV columnist and pop music reviewer. In 1961 he became a freelance rock journalist and in the 1970s wrote a series of paperbacks on pop stars, including The David Bowie Story, the first bio of the musician. 

He is a biographer of Dylan Thomas and his wife Caitlin. He interviewed Caitlin at her home in Catalonia for the book Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas. He has argued that Thomas was "the first rock star." In 1997 he published a book with James Nashold, The Death of Dylan Thomas, which claimed that Thomas' death was not due to alcohol poisoning but to a mistake by Thomas' physician in prescribing cortisone, morphine and benzedrine when Thomas was actually in a diabetic coma.

Tremlett runs the Corran Bookshop in Laugharne, Wales "a shrine to the poet"; has since 1982. The shop offers tourist information...and it's where I met George to have this conversation.