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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