First showing in England for Under Milk Wood illustrations

The exhibition, which runs until January, consists of 40 portraits, including watercolours, prints, drawings and collages, of characters in Thomas’s extraordinary "play for voices".

Under Milk Wood was commissioned by the BBC and first broadcast in 1954 just after the writer's premature death in New York.

It is an emotive and hilarious account of a spring day in the fictional Welsh seaside village of Llareggub. Listeners learn of the inhabitants' dreams and desires, their loves and regrets, meeting such characters as Captain Cat, who dreams of his drowned former sea fellows, and Nogood Boyo, who dreams of nothing at all. It is a unique and touching depiction of a village that has "fallen head over bells in love".

The artist – also a co-creator of the sleeve design for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – was a student at the Royal College of Art when he first heard Under Milk Wood.

In the 1970s he became aware of Dylan Thomas’s play as a source of inspiration for making art. In 1986, Blake planned to illustrate a book with Michael Mitchell. He visited Laugharne, the Welsh fishing village where Thomas, his wife and family had lived, and he started making drawings.

"I became completely obsessed by the way Thomas communicates in the play with his mingling of themes, and that’s what I wanted to do in my illustrations," he said. "There are so many differing explorations of love."

However, it was not until 2014, the writer’s centenary, that the book Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, Images by Peter Blake was finally published by Enitharmon and the Queen Anne Press. The exhibition has been lent by Sir Peter Blake and the publisher.

On Monday, January 11, Sir Peter Blake will appear at the Mercer gallery for a lunchtime event where he will be interviewed by art historian and writer Marco Livingstone. For tickets, call 01423 556188 or email museums@harrogate.gov.uk.