The eccentric bookseller who put Hay on the map
The self-proclaimed King of Hay, Richard Booth “was a British eccentric of the best kind”, said The Guardian. A bookseller with an eye for the eye-catching, he had grown up in Hay-on-Wye, then bought its castle and, in the 1960s, started turning the quiet market town into a capital of the second-hand book trade. Relishing the wacky and wonderful, and detesting bureaucracy, he declared Hay an independent sovereign state in 1977. After that, he wore a home-made crown, appointed his horse prime minister, issued passports, founded a notso-secret secret service called the C.I.Hay, and printed an edible currency (so that people could put their money where their mouth is). He even produced a national sausage. Although often silly, his ventures were not all a joke. His aim was to forge a distinct identity for the town he loved, recognising that this was the best way to halt its decline and secure its future.
King Richard Coeur de Livre (Bookheart) was born Richard George William Pitt Booth in 1938, to Philip, an Army officer, and Elizabeth (née Pitt), an heiress to the Yardley soap fortune. He was educated at Rugby and Merton College, Oxford, where he read history. It was inheriting his uncle’s Brynmelyn estate near Hay that enabled him, in 1961, to open the first of his many bookshops. To stack the miles of dusty shelving he had built in various premises around the town, he toured aristocratic homes in search of book collections he could buy up cheap. He also travelled to the US, to buy books by the tonne from college libraries. It was seeing America’s faceless shopping malls that made him worry for the future of Britain’s high streets. By the 1970s, book-buyers from all over the country were flocking to Hay, and some of the many local people he employed opened shops of their own.
Although ostensibly left-wing, Booth’s political leanings were not clear: he opposed the minimum wage, and was “sceptical about education”, said The Times, arguing that it caused problems for rural areas. If you make it possible for people to get qualifications, he said, the brightest leave and never return: “Which is why so many Welsh towns are run by stupid people.” By 1988, Hay was so famous as a centre for the used-book trade, it was deemed a good site for a new literary festival. But with its A-list speakers and corporate sponsorship, the Hay Festival was a world apart from his arcane shops, and he resented it, arguing that it exploited the town’s reputation while giving little back to the traders who’d put Hay on the map. Booth did not claim to be a great businessman, and by 2007 most of his bookshops had closed; in 2011, the King, who had no children, sold Hay Castle to a trust, and retired. His first two marriages were short-lived. He is survived by his third wife, Hope Stuart.