Richard Booth

Richard Booth MBE
Richard Booth in 1984
Born	Richard George William Pitt Booth (1938-09-12)12 September 1938 Plymouth, Devon, England
Died	20 August 2019(2019-08-20) (aged 80) Cusop, Herefordshire, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Occupation	Bookseller
Political party	Socialist Labour Party (UK)
Awards	Order of the British Empire

Richard George William Pitt Booth MBE (12 September 1938 – 20 August 2019) was a British bookseller, known for his contribution to the success of Hay-on-Wye as a centre for second-hand bookselling. He was also the self-proclaimed "King of Hay".

Biography

Booth was born in Plymouth, Devon. He was educated at Rugby School and Merton College at the University of Oxford, yet he dreaded seeing how young men like himself left his hometown for the city, and wondered what trade could save this small rural economy. Having inherited the Brynmelyn estate from his uncle, Major Willie Booth, he then opened a second-hand bookshop in Hay-on-Wye, in the old fire station, and took the strongest men of Hay to America, where libraries were closing fast. They bought and shipped books in containers back to Hay-on-Wye. His example was followed by others, so that by the 1970s Hay had become internationally known as the "Town of Books".

In 1973, he appeared on the American game show To Tell the Truth, hosted by Garry Moore. (Episode #1555)

On 1 April 1977, Richard Booth proclaimed Hay an "independent kingdom" with himself as king Richard Cœur de Livre and his horse as Prime Minister. The publicity stunt gained extensive news coverage and resulted in several spin-offs such as "passports" being issued.

On 1 April 2000, Booth followed up with an investiture of "The Hay House of Lords" and created 21 new hereditary peers for the "Kingdom of Hay".

The Hay Literary Festival was another spin-off from the burgeoning number of bookshops in the town, which gets an estimated 500,000 tourists a year. In recognition of his services to tourism, Richard Booth was awarded the MBE in the 2004 New Year Honours List. In August 2005, Richard Booth announced that he was selling his Hay bookshop and moving to Germany. The bookshop is now under ownership of Elizabeth Haycox and has had extensive refurbishment works carried out since 2009.

Ultimately, Richard Booth did not move to Germany but continued to live in Brynmelyn, owning a bookshop called The King of Hay.

He married his second wife Hope Stuart, a former freelance photographer, in the 1980s. In 1999, he published his autobiography My Kingdom of Books (Y Lolfa, ISBN 0862434955) with the help of his stepdaughter Lucia Stuart.

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 are as follows:

2014 – Judge – Rachel Cooke, winner - Jo Jones

2015 – Judge – Colin McDowell, winner - Emma van Woerkom

2016 – Judge – Dan Davies, winner – Juliet Foster

2017 – Judge – Noel Kingsbury, winner – Ange Grunsell

2018 – Judge – Oliver Bullough, winner – Marianne Rosen

Politics

Booth stood as a candidate for the Socialist Labour Party in the 1999 Welsh Assembly elections and Wales constituency at the 2009 European Parliament election.

Welsh Assembly elections

Year	Region	Party	Votes	%	Result
1999	Mid and West Wales	SLP	3,019	1.4	Not elected

European Parliament elections

Year	Region	Party	Votes	%	Result	Notes
2009	Wales	SLP	12,402	1.8	Not-elected	Multi-member constituency; party list

External links

• BBC Arts