Richard Booth

Early life

Booth was born in Plymouth, England in 1938. He was attended Rugby School and the University of Oxford. As a child, his father, an army officer, would take him to book stores, which fostered his love of reading. After his family inherited the Brynmelyn estate, they moved to Hay.

Literary award

In 2014, Booth gave his name to an annual literary award in association with the Hay Writers' Circle. Judges and winners of the Richard Booth Prize for Non-Fiction include:

Politics

Booth stood unsuccessfully for the Socialist Labour Party as a prospective AM candidate at the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections and for Wales constituency MEP at the 2009 European Parliament elections.

Welsh Assembly elections

European Parliament elections

Booth effigy beheading

In 2009, a revolt was held against the "King" by so-called republicans, led by bookseller and proprietor of Oxford House Books, Paul Harris, who journalist Sean Dodson called a "Cromwell figure". He was former employee of Booth's, reported as being "tutored at the knee" of the self-declared regent and helping him move large "lorry loads" of books from the United States to the UK, in an on-off "love/hate" working relationship that lasted over a decade. Despite Harris's leading of a trial of treason and symbolic "beheading" of Booth, they "remained on good terms". After becoming independent of Booth and setting up his own bookshop in the town, subsequently setting up a commonwealth, became the "first minister" and planned to set up a Speaker's Corner, which would establish Hay as a bastion of "free speech".

The "trial for treason" was not just a publicity stunt; like the initial declaration of independence by Booth, it was inspired by political concerns, but instead of economic decline, the rebels were inspired by concerns around the issue of gentrification. Though Harris is not recorded as having used the word, he was concerned about the threat posed to the independent character of the town by the over-dependence on the commercial, outsider interests of the Hay Festival, "saying, we cannot trade off the profile of the festival for 52 weeks a year". Indeed, Harris's prosecuting argument was that the Hay Festival had become too publicly dominant and had negatively impacted the economic fortunes of the many secondhand books shops that made up the town.

Harris argued that Booth, a promotional figurehead of the town due to his self-declared kingship, had been negligent in promoting the issues of the booksellers over the festival. He told the press in 2009, "You can fill a town with books, but that won't bring people to the town[...] You need publicity and promotion, which is now all sucked up by the festival. Richard used to be great at drumming up publicity and denouncing the festival. He's not able to do that any more, so we need to set up a council to replace him." and "My point is we've retired him, and if you have any respect for him then let him have a rest – he's 71." Another of the to-be commonwealth, bookseller and "Witchfinder General" Peter "Boz" Harries agreed, arguing that Booth had failed in his crown duty, adding, "We think this is a natural continuation. There are one or two locals who think it is rather cruel, but when Richard had his coronation in the 1970s a lot of locals were vehemently against him."