The Bookseller of Hay

<B>''A breathtakingly hilarious and absorbing portrait of one of the most brilliant, dotty, dippy delirious yet ultimately inspiring eccentrics in British history . . . A remarkable story of cultural life, friendship, obsession and passion'' Stephen Fry</B><BR><B><B><BR></B>''</B><B>Brilliantly evocative, like listening to the gossip of ghosts'' Bruce Robinson</B><BR><B><BR></B><B>''<I>The Bookseller of Hay</I> is the very model of a biography which amazes, occasionally horrifies and entirely engrosses . . . James Hanning is a writer of sublime insight, style and skill'' Horatio Clare</B><BR><B><BR></B><B>''What you have to understand is that Richard Booth was completely mad'' Marianne Faithfull</B><BR><BR><BR>In 1962, a young man left university without a degree and, for want of anything better to do, bought a small shop in an obscure market town on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. Within fifteen years, largely through force of personality, Richard Booth had created the world''s largest second-hand bookshop, attracting thousands of visitors from across the globe to Hay-on-Wye, on the Welsh border. <I><BR></I><BR><I>The Bookseller of Hay</I> tells the tale of an extraordinary, chaotic man, a true British eccentric, who invented the term ''book town'', attracted a coterie of exotic and illustrious followers, crowned himself king, declared the town''s independence and provided the bookish backdrop which - to his frustration - allowed a rival attraction, the now world-famous Hay Festival, to flourish. <BR><BR>It is a story of the extraordinary singlemindedness of a hard-working, hard-playing and rebellious son of privilege, inspired by a romantic vision and a deep love of the area, of a man better suited to publicity than bean-counting, who launched countless careers but whose business instincts undermined precisely what had brought success. Booth was a deeply divisive figure, but love him or hate him, all agree on one thing. He put Hay on the map.<BR><BR><B>James Hanning, a frequent visitor to Hay since the 1960s, has interviewed dozens of local people and booksellers and with typical acuity wonderfully captures this bygone era of eccentricity and excess.</B>