"Book lovers take note, this is a fascinating take on Richard Booth, who made the beautiful Hay-on-Wye famous as a book town."
A wonderfully quirky ramble through the life of Richard Booth who is known for putting the small market town of Hay-on-Wye firmly on the world map. If you are a book lover, it is highly likely you will have visited the town itself for the bookshops or been to the Hay Festival. I feel right at home in Hay, several friends live close by and each time I visit I schedule in time to spend a very happy day wandering the streets and shops (and I make sure I take plenty of sturdy bags with me). So, when I saw that there was a biography highlighting both Richard Booth and the creation of the book town I clapped my hands in glee. Author James Hanning has interviewed many people from the town and those who worked for or knew Booth intimately. He allows the words of others to create ambiguity, some loved him, others loathed him. Booth appeared to be rebellious, selfish, thoughtless and even unkind, but could also be generous, determined, and he obviously loved Hay. I was pleased to see that Hay features as much as the man who made it famous, I could picture the places described, and it was absolutely fascinating to learn about its history and so I have chosen this biography as a Liz Pick of the Month. The Bookseller of Hay wanders through Booth’s life and the shops and town he made famous, it details a thoroughly eccentric man and the gorgeous town he loved.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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In 1962, a young man left university without a degree and, for want of anything better to do, bought a small shop in an obscure market town on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Within fifteen years, largely through force of personality, Richard Booth had created the world's largest second-hand bookshop, attracting thousands of visitors from across the globe to Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh border.
The Bookseller of Hay tells the tale of an extraordinary, chaotic man, a true British eccentric, who invented the term 'book town', attracted a coterie of exotic and illustrious followers, crowned himself king, declared the town's independence and provided the bookish backdrop which - to his frustration - allowed a rival attraction, the now world-famous Hay Festival, to flourish.
It is a story of the extraordinary singlemindedness of a hard-working, hard-playing and rebellious son of privilege, inspired by a romantic vision and a deep love of the area, of a man better suited to publicity than bean-counting who launched countless careers but whose business instincts undermined precisely what had brought success. Booth was a deeply divisive figure, but love him or hate him, all agree on one thing. He put Hay on the map.
James Hanning, a frequent visitor to Hay since the 1960s, has interviewed dozens of local people and booksellers and with typical acuity wonderfully captures this bygone era of eccentricity and excess.
The Bookseller of Hay features in the following genres: Liz Robinson's Picks of the Month, Recommendations, Biographies & Autobiographies, Gift Books, History, Biography: arts and entertainment, Biography: business and industry, Biography: general
The Bookseller of Hay is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Bookseller of Hay was written by James Hanning and published by Corsair an imprint of Little, Brown
The Bookseller of Hay has 304 pages
£19.80
