The Hay Festival has ended, but reports from this enormous festival do not. Here’s another dispatch from George Binning:
In 1977, having started a craze for second hand book shops and festivals in Hay on Wye, Richard Booth crowned himself King of Hay. He also appointed a chamber of hereditary peers in 2000 (a nice little earner), but in spite of his lifelong contribution to Hay’s cultural landscape, a large number of the locals think he is a wally. In fact one man tells me that there was a sort of revolution a few years ago where an angry mob ritually beheaded an effigy of Booth. He recently sold Hay Castle for around the two million mark and there are fears that the castle will be closed off and redecorated.
It very quickly struck me that King Booth would be a highly suitable character for one of Alexander McCall Smith’s novels. The celebrated author appeared in conversation with Anne Robinson, and judging by his relentlessly jovial wit, it is a story he may have very much enjoyed himself. In discussing the techniques and novelties of writing the latest installment of Corduroy Mansions as a serial for the Telegraph, McCall Smith flowed seemlessly between fiction and reality, and talked about his favourite characters, such as Bertie from ‘Scotland Street’ as though they were friends of his. He even showed great attention to his canine characters.
Unsurprisingly there was a touch of the lovable reactionary in his words, as he bemoaned his publishers instruction to use ‘banal’ twitter. He also claimed that he refused to acknowlege the existence of mobiles in his writing, as well as anything else he disapproved of. “Denial and hypocracy get bad press. They can be very useful,” he quipped. A few other items on his list of complaints were the death of the Scots language, the dissappearance of surnames, swearing, letters, pushy Edinburgh mothers (amen) and ‘Scottish Miserabilism’ – that dour outlook that shapes much Scottish literature.
Comments