Hay-on-Wye, which claims to be the world capital of used books, is caught up in a feud between rural traditionalism and big business.
On one side stands Richard Booth, a self-styled eccentric who yearns for an agrarian world of horse travel. Opposing him is former London businessman Leon Morelli, who believes the occasional chain store and literary festival will be good for Hay-on-Wye.Hay-on-Wye, 150 miles west of London, is not famous for scenery or old buildings. Its business is books and not much else. The village on the Welsh border has 1,300 people and 21 bookstores. Bookstores fill a converted movie house, fire station and chapel, as well as a wing of the 12th-century Norman castle where Booth lives.
The town's 10 miles of bookshelves offer everything from rare first editions bound in Moroccan leather to yellowing bargain-priced paperbacks.
"Unemployment is very low and the town is booming," says Steve Like, Hay's mayor, postmaster and tourist information bureau manager.
Booth, 50, brought the book business to Hay-on-Wye after he moved here in 1962 and bought the dilapidated castle with the proceeds of his early book sales. Morelli, 45, moved in from London in the 1980s, and the feud was soon raging.
Morelli gives Booth credit for transforming the obscure village into a book-lovers' Mecca, but does not share his distaste for conventional business methods. Booth's anti-business ethic keeps him in chronic financial trouble, while Morelli now heads the chamber of commerce and is an active supporter of the annual literary festival, which will be held for the third time next May.
Booth hates the festival: "It's part of the manipulation of villages and rural people by bureaucrats and big business," he said. Morelli believes the tickets to the concerts, poetry readings and literary discussions were reasonably priced at around $9.
Booth, meanwhile, is beginning to have doubts about his own chosen trade, saying: "As I see trees turned into books, I'm beginning to realize that most books would be better as trees."