Notebooks belonging to Dylan Thomas will go on show in his native Wales, more than 70 years after he sold them to a US university, after a museum dedicated to the poet received a grant of almost £1 million.

The money — £935,700 in total — from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will go towards the redevelopment of the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.

It means memorabilia, including a love letter to his wife Caitlin, will be able to be brought out of the archives and put on show alongside the notebooks which Thomas sold to the University of Buffalo, New York, in 1941.

His granddaughter Hannah Ellis said: "I want young audiences to be able to discover my grandfather's poems, stories and plays."