HAY BEFORE THE BOOKSHOPS OR THE BEEMAN’S FAMILY

I promoted my new book Hay before the Bookshops or The Beeman’s family on site during the Hay Festival week.  The book is a story of childhood in the Welsh Border town of Hay-on-Wye during the 1950s.  A surprise meeting at the event was with one of my childhood friends whom I have not seen for over fifty years.  Christine Jones was my best friend at the time, and we gazed into each other’s eyes trying to reconstruct our memories of each other.  Another wonderful episode was with a man whose gypsy family features in the book, and who had been told in advance.  He brought a photo, which I had given his parents in 1966, of them standing in front of their caravan with him as a three-year-old boy on his tricycle.

Now, as many as 80,000 visitors pour into Hay annually for the internationally-famous annual festival.   Former USA President Bill Clinton once described it as ‘the Woodstock of the mind.’

I like to think that my book is making a modest, very modest, contribution to the heritage of the little town which didn’t even have a bookshop when I was a child.

Below

Photo 1 – Christine Jones and me

Photo 2 – me with my brother Stephen with whom I did the presentation

                  

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