Second-hand book ‘king’ battles to retain throne

Press, 5 November 1984, Page 22

Second-hand book ‘king’ battles to retain throne

By

MARCUS ELIASON

NZPA-PA Hay-on-Wye, Wales

The tiny village of Hay-on-Wye is at war. The self-crowned king sits among the crumbling ramparts of his castle, while his enemy pounds on the door, clamouring to unthrone him. The unlikely setting for this clash of the titans is a tranquil village on the Welsh-English border. The prize at stake is secondhand books, more than 1 million of them, lining some 16km of shelves in what, until the war began, was reputedly the world’s biggest used bookstore. Hay does not offer quaint pubs, ye olde tea shoppes and overpriced antiques. A tourist will not find much to photograph. The business of Hay is books. Every seventh

store sells used books. Every tenth inhabitant works in a bookshop. The cinema, the old fire station, a chapel and a wing of the castle have all been converted into bookstores. The monarch is Richard Booth, aged 45, a rumpled bibliophile who over 23 years has singlehandedly transformed the village of 1500 people ‘ into a bookworm’s mecca. He calls himself the King of Hay. The pretender is Leon Morelli, aged 40, a highpowered London accountant and book distributor who, having bought much of Mr Booth’s stock, now wants to gain control of the village castle owned by Mr Booth. It is all in the best traditions of British eccentricity — a village with more miles of bookshelves than roads; a man who calls himself the king and seems to mean it; a dispute wljich is both acrimonious enough to be taken seriously and amusing enough to provide a jolly good time for all. Mr Morelli says Mr Booth has proved unfit to reign because his business is in trouble and he has neglected the castle instead of fixing its roof and ramparts. “The castle is a very serious point,” Mr Morelli said. “He wants to turn the castle into a monument worthy of a village that is to used books what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to candy bars.” Mr Booth said he sees Mr Morelli as the big-business usurper from London who will wreck Hay’s rural revival. He accuses him of “incredibly insulting and unwarranted interference in

something that is none of his business”. Visitors to ’Hay range from collectors hunting for rare first editions to families with crates of old books to sell after cleaning out the attic. You can -find everything in Hay from paperback mysteries at 15 cents each to an eight-volume 1823 study of British insects at $6708. Hay was just another obscure village until 1961 when Mr Booth arrived from Oxford University to take up residence in an ancestral house he had inherited. He imported his first used books from the United States, and when the venture succeeded; he bought the twelfth-century Norman castle in the village centre. At' his peak, Mr Booth owned about 1 million books and got his store into the Guinness Book of Records. However, Mr Booth is also a disciple of back-to-the-land, and believes that through the book trade he can turn Hay into,a showpiece of rural independence. So in 1977 he crowned himself king, declared the village independent, designed a flag and composed an anthem. The village council haughtily disclaimed the venture, but the villagers found it mildly amusing, and many went along with Mr Booth’s eccentricities in the hope that they would increase the tourist flow. However, the game began to go sour. Mr Booth’s abhorrence of conventional business methods . ran his shop aground in Britain’s recession. In 1982 he turned

to Mr Morelli for help and sold him about half his stock of books.

Mr Booth says he thought Mr Morelli would co-oper-ate with him in furthering the book trade. “Instead, his objective was to take over, become the dominant figure and take control of the castle,” Mr Booth said. Last year, Mr Morelli tried to unthrone Mr Booth by holding a referendum in which villagers were asked to register their votes by throwing darts at a photograph of one of the contenders. Mr Morelli asserted victory, but Mr Booth cried foul play, accusing Mr Morelli of plying villagers with glasses of free sherry in return for their vote.

Mr Morelli argues that Mr Booth’s . business methods will destroy Hay as a book centre. “We are businessmen and businesses have to be run on business principles,” he said in an interview.

Mr Booth lives alone and frugally in a small wing of the castle, churning out pamphlets ridiculing the bureaucrats and university graduates whom he blames for debasing the local culture. He recently campaigned successfully to keep a supermarket chain from opening a branch in Hay and wants to restore horses as Hay’s main means of transport.

However, one of his shops is in receivership, and he has lost his entry in the Guinness Book of Records, since he now controls only 250,000 books to •Mr Morelli’s 750,000.