Walk about books
The Welsh town of Hay on Wye comes to life in May-June as book lovers, authors, critics and journalists pour in here from all over the world
About three and half hours by train from
London’s Paddington station to England’s border town of Hereford and another 45 minutes
or so uphill to the south is the Welsh town of Hay on
Wye, now famous world over for its literary festival
held every year in May-June. It is a small, sleepy
town with a permanent population of just about
1,500. Even on the weekly local market day of
Thursdays, the town feels unusually quiet to an
Indian used to the hustle and bustle of one’s home
city or town. Hay on Wye, however, suddenly comes
to life in May-June every year as large crowds of
book lovers, literary types, art enthusiasts, music
afficionados, celebrity authors, aspiring writers, critics, artists and journalists pour in here from all over
the world.
It is Richard Booth, the self-declared and selfcrowned King of Hay on Wye, who first shook up
this sleepy town to life in 1962 when he opened his
first bookshop here. Many today dismiss him merely
as a clown while others hail him as a master publicist and marketing wizard. Call what you may but
there can be no two opinions about the fact that it is
Booth who has put this small, sleepy, backyard rural
market town on the world map by cleverly developing it as a Mecca of second-hand books, booksellers,
book lovers and writers of
the world. It is he who
declared Hay a 'Book
Town' which has inspired
book lovers and booksellers in over a dozen other
countries to set up similar
book towns which have all
become an inseparable
part of their countries’ cultural landscape
Though it is Booth who
first made Hay on Wye a
glorious cultural icon of
Wales and Great Britain,
it is the father and son
duo of Norman and Peter
Florence who deserve the
credit for launching the
Hay on Wye literary festival in 1988 for which
money came from
Norman’s winnings at
poker games. Bill Clinton
made the festival famous
by calling it “the
Woodstock of mind.” The
Hay literary festival has
generated many sister festivals in far off places like Nairobi, Maldives, Belfast and Beirut. Even India
launched a sister festival of its own in
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in November 2010 at
which Peter Florence was a guest of honour. Many
literary, social and political celebrities come to Hay
on Wye for the much publicised event. Several bookshops have leaflets displaying Pakistan’s Parvez
Musharraf’s photograph. He is here too somewhere.
But I am in Hay on Wye to visit the second-hand
bookshops and meet booksellers I have befriended
on the internet like the old couple at C. Arden
Booksellers who specialise in natural history books.
They have a rare book on Indian birds—T. C.
Jerdon’s Birds of South India. They have a small but
very well stocked bookshop on the side of the Broad
Street. I have been receiving their well researched
catalogues for quite some years but I feel saddened
when they break the news that they soon plan to
retire to the quiet of a village up in the hills and
hand over the business to their daughter and son-inlaw. “But it will turn so quiet here when the festival
is over,” I tell them, “How much more quiet can it be
up in the hills?” “Oh, but it’s a town, you know,” says
the old Arden, “So much hustle and bustle here. I
think we deserve better.” That was quite some years
ago. I have not been receiving their catalogue for a
long time now. But, then, I haven’t bought anything
from them for a long time too!
Every second or third shop in Hay on Wye is a
bookshop. My favourite here is Francis Edwards
who have two shops in London too. They surprisingly get dozens of rare and collectable books on
South Asia including India. Then, there is the Poetry
Bookshop where I find a number of collections of
obscure Indian poems in English including a rare
volume of Nissim Ezekiel and Shakti Bhattacharya.
In the evening I go uphill to the Hay on Wye Castle
which Booth bought a long time back and turned
into a biggest second-hand bookshop of the world.
He is not there but his wife is. She takes my wife
and me through a maze-like wonderland of secondhand books stacked in every nook and corner and
along walls of the Hay castle where Booth first
established his Kingdom of Books (see picture).
“There have been people here from so many countries but never one from India!” she says, “India
must be very far and I am sure you have many second-hand bookshops in India. Books must go
through many hands in a poor country, I think.” She
offers us coffee and biscuits, and even insists on seeing us off to our hotel, graciously carrying our bags
of books to her car despite her age.
The pleasure of Hay is that every morning before
the bookshops open you can go for a walk up or
down along the River Wye as I do every day of my
stay in the town. Walk about amidst books!
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