The unlikely birth of a festival
Hay-on-Wye is a Welsh town on the edge of the mountainous Brecon Beacons, with a population of about 1500. I became aware of its existence in the 1970s when my older brother dropped out of London University and moved there, finding work as a forester. My parents disapproved and discouraged me from visiting, but I visited anyway. I have a distinct memory of a cottage with a wood-burning stove and a sense of having stepped into the past.
I didn't know it then, but Hay was already becoming famous among lovers of used books. Richard Booth, a native of Hay, having been educated at Rugby School and Oxford, had renounced accountancy training in London and returned home to sell used books in Hay's old fire station. He too was a disappointment to his parents (according to his autobiography: My Kingdom of Books) but, unlike many who were escaping the city in search of a simpler way of life, he had entrepreneurial ambitions, fuelled by a desire to reinvigorate the local economy.
He travelled to Ireland in search of books and then to America. He moved into the larger space of the old cinema. Other bookshops opened, many of them catering to specific interests, and Hay was soon acquiring an international reputation. Booth bought the neglected Norman castle that dominates the town and in 1977, showing his talent as a publicist, declared Hay an independent kingdom.
In the 1980s I was teaching in Monmouth, about an hour's drive away. My brother had moved on by then, and my visits to Hay were for the books. The simplest route stays close to the Wye valley. I preferred the narrow road that winds up into the hills, reaching an area of moorland where sheep and wild ponies graze, before dropping steeply towards the town. It helped preserve my sense of Hay as isolated and not quite of this world.
When Peter Florence launched the first Hay Festival in 1988, Booth waged a colourful campaign against it, on the grounds that it created no full-time jobs, while satisfying “the egos and marketing strategies” of second-rate writers. I had other concerns. I'd grown up in Cheltenham, home to Britain's oldest literary festival. A handsome and substantial town, full of elegant buildings including a beautiful Victorian town hall, Cheltenham seemed an ideal venue. Hay is great for a day trip when the sun shines, I thought, but scurrying in the rain along duckboards between tents is surely less appealing. I wondered why a lot of smart Londoners would want to rough it in this backwater.
Clearly I was wrong. Booth was wrong too and recalled later that Florence had “generously forgiven” him. The Hay Festival turned out to be not only hugely successful, but remarkably adaptable. Florence and Tahmima Anam have apparently succeeded in transporting Hay to Dhaka. Physical infrastructure is less essential, it seems, than the conceptual kind, and the old Hay magic has proved able to transcend borders.
Read more of Joe Treasure at http://joetreasure.blogspot.co.uk/
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