Hay-on-Wye: The Town That Declared Itself a Kingdom to Sell More Books

Richard Booth started buying and selling secondhand books in Hay-on-Wye in the 1960s. The Welsh market town on the Wye Valley border with England had no particular claim to cultural significance. Booth kept buying books and kept opening shops, and other booksellers followed, and by the 1970s the town had accumulated enough secondhand stock to constitute a legitimate destination. In 1977 he declared Hay an independent kingdom with himself as king, a stunt of transparent self-promotion that attracted sufficient media coverage to establish the town’s identity in the wider consciousness.

The strategy worked. Hay now has around 30 secondhand and antiquarian bookshops for a population of fewer than 2,000 people. The Hay Festival, which runs for ten days in late May or early June, attracts over 250,000 visitors and has been called by Bill Clinton “the Woodstock of the mind” - a comparison that tells you more about Clinton than about either event, but does convey the scale.

The Bookshops

The quality varies considerably. Some are genuinely excellent specialist operations with coherent stock; others are more of the sell-it-by-the-metre variety that has given secondhand bookselling a chaotic reputation.

Hay Cinema Bookshop on Castle Street occupies a converted cinema and has an enormous general stock spread across multiple floors. The science, philosophy, and travel sections are worth examining carefully. Richard Booth’s Bookshop on Lion Street, the successor to the original operation, has a good general stock and a café worth stopping at. Addyman Books (three locations) has a particular strength in quality literary fiction, having been in the town long enough to develop a coherent curatorial approach.

The outdoor honesty bookshop - a stall where books are priced and a box provided for payment with no attendant - is exactly what it sounds like and is one of the better institutional quirks in Welsh retail.

The Festival

If you plan a visit around the Hay Festival (usually running the last week of May through the first week of June), book accommodation 6-12 months ahead. Prices for 50 kilometres in every direction increase substantially for festival week. Tickets for headline speakers sell out quickly after the programme is announced, typically in February.

The fringe programme during festival week is free: authors in bookshops, pop-up events, village hall talks. These are often more interesting than the main stages for people who find large crowds difficult.

The Landscape

The Brecon Beacons (now Bannau Brycheiniog) are 15 kilometres south. The Pen-y-Fan summit from Pont ar Daf car park is a 7-kilometre return walk and is the most popular hill walk in Wales; on clear days the views extend to the Bristol Channel.

The Wye Valley walk between Hay and Monmouth is about 50 kilometres of good multi-day walking: the river, the wooded gorge, Tintern Abbey, and the cliff promontories above the river provide variety throughout. Day walks from Hay along the river toward Glasbury are pleasant without requiring multiple nights.

Getting There

The nearest main station is Hereford, 25 kilometres east. There is a bus service from Hereford; driving is the practical option. Parking in central Hay fills quickly on summer weekends. The Bear Hotel on Bear Street is the oldest established hotel in the town.