When I bought a house near Hay-on-Wye, 20 years ago, Richard Booth loomed over the area like a kind of absent, benign monarch. Hay-on-Wye, the second-hand book capital of the world, was renowned for its globally recognised book festival (“the Woodstock of the mind”, according to Bill Clinton, who once spoke there), with more bookshops than any other town in the world — and Booth was its self-proclaimed king.
I never met Booth, and for the last few years of his life (he died, aged 80, six years ago) he was a semi-recluse, and yet he was largely responsible for developing a town which has since contributed more than any other to the Welsh creative community.
