When I visited Hay-on-Wye in August of this year, I had missed the festival, but I still got to see the many different bookshops in this eccentric little town. I love books and as a result one of my favourite shops is of course a bookshop! I was lucky and got to work in two different branches of Waterstone in my twenties, the last one was in the Charing Cross Road when it still boasted several different types of book shop.
Sadly, due to rising London rents and Amazon, many of those quirky book shops have now closed. That is why going to Hay and seeing a similar spread of interesting, unusual, and specialised books shops cheek by jowl over a few streets was particularly joyous.
Richard Booth’s Bookshop http://www.boothbooks.co.uk and is spread over three floors, sells new and second-hand books, and has sections for just about every subject you can imagine. My party of four spent a lot of time looking for books and then sitting in a comfy chair to flick through them. What I didn’t have time to do was check out the tearoom and cinema that are also there!
Due to my personal interest in reading and writing crime fiction, I was really looking forward to going to Murder and Mayhem, which was close by. This is a second-hand bookshop which specialises in crime, mystery and horror and is part of the Addyman group of book sellers in Hay-on-Wye, which started out in 1987. The shop is the opposite of Booths. It’s not that big at all, but it’s crammed with everything a crime book addict would want! I loved it and bought an Agatha Christie paperback ‘The Labours of Hercules’ and, for research for own crime writing, a book about postmortems ‘Past Mortems: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors’ by Carla Valentine.
Warning! I’m going to do a spoiler about Howard’s End by E.M.Forster. For those of you who haven’t read the book or seen the film version and would prefer to remain ignorant of what happens in that book away now. I believe that all bibliophiles should be encouraged to read Howard’s End as a matter of course. This is due to the tragedy that is visited upon young, idealistic, low-paid insurance clerk Leonard Bast when he is killed when a bookcase collapses on him. Whether or not Forster intended this, his book has proved to be a Health and Safety document for later generations and I am always careful near bookcases…!
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The Murder and Mayhem shopfront is a particular delight, isn’t it! I love the design and also the hung shop sign over the road. I didn’t visit the last time I went but really need to stay a full day or two to do the bookshops justice! Luckily I live not too far away in Crickhowell, able to comfortably do a day trip when it suits – sadly for others (like you, I’m guessing) not such a luxury.
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It’s definitely not near Norfolk my neck of the woods! We were visiting Birmingham and Hay is relatively close. I would definitely like to go back!
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