The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Richard Booth, self-proclaimed king of Hay-on-Wye
Richard Booth, a second-hand bookseller and the self-appointed king of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, has died at the age of 80.
Booth was educated at Rugby and Oxford and considered careers in law and accountancy.
But a three-week spell as an accountant convinced him to get involved in the book trade instead.
After inheriting a property in Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh-English border in 1961, he invested in a string of properties which he filled with lorryloads of books, many imported from libraries in the US.
His success led to a proliferation of other book stores in the village and Hay-on-Wye became a popular destination for tourists and bibliophiles alike.
An eccentric self-publicist, Booth declared Hay independent on April Fool’s Day 1977 and named himself Kind Richard Coeur de Livre. His then wife was made queen and his horse prime minister before issuing Hay passports and currency.
Thirteen years later he followed up the stunt by creating the “Hay House of Lords” and created 21 hereditary peers for the “Kingdom of Hay”.
The success of the town’s bookselling industry led to the creation of Hay Literary Festival.
The town now receives around 500,000 tourists a year because of the trade.
An outspoken critic of everything from local councils, supermarkets and advertising, he claimed to be a friend of Arthur Scargill and stood for the Socialist Labour Party in the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections and the 2009 European Parliament elections.
He published his autobiography, My Kingdom of Books, in 1999 and sold his last remaining bookshop in 2005.
Booth was given an MBE in 2004 for services to tourism in Powys.
In 2014 Hay Writers’ Circle gave his name to an annual non-fiction book prize.
Booth was married three times.
His third wife, Hope Stuart, a former freelance photographer, survives him.