This brand new exhibition follows the remarkable story of how Richard Jenkins, the boy from Pontrhydyfen and Tai-bach, Port Talbot, became Richard Burton, the international star of stage and screen. The exhibition features Burton’s diaries, papers and personal objects- displayed for the first time- from Richard Burton Archives held at Swansea University. His earliest diary, written as a fourteen-year-old schoolboy at the beginning of the Second World War, gives a glimpse into his teenage life in Port Talbot and presents the people and places that had a profound influence on Richard’s journey. Other highlight objects loaded for the exhibition include costumes worn by Burton on stage in the Shakespearean performances that launched his career, and later as a Hollywood star in Cleopatra, the film that changed his life. At the height of his fame, Burton was constantly in the spotlight, and often misunderstood in the press. Through his personal diaries and paper this exhibition will reveal the man behind the headlines- Richard Burton the husband, father, reader, writer and passionate Welshman.