There was a point at which the whole town of Hay-on-Wye was pretty well only bookshops, with even the old fire station, the agricultural hall the and cinema sold to Richard Booth.
And it was delightful chaos. You could buy copies of Ward Lock’s Red Guide series at one of his shops for 50p and sell them to another for £1.50, and so finance your collecting of them. In this way I acquired almost a complete set of PG Wodehouse first editions for a friend.
Richard took to buying huge libraries from all over the English-speaking world. I once bought a copy of Life on the English Manor: A Study of Peasant Conditions 1150-1400 for a quid. Inside was the library stamp of the Arkansas Seminary library with the form for borrowers to list their names. Only one person had ever taken it out, and that was Bill Clinton.
But once it all imploded – with locals parading with placards on to which were stapled Richard’s bounced cheques – other book dealers moved in and Hay became truly a town of books.
He did not just start the notion of booktowns but the whole idea of regenerating places with very specialist interests on the basis that if they can offer something distinctive, then minorities in large numbers can prove to be profitable.
