I've been enjoying this snapshot of Hay just before the pandemic (I picked it up in the Castle gift shop). Kate Noakes is primarily a poet, so there's quite a bit of poetry included in the book, as well as her own black and white photos.
She divides the book into North, South, Central, East, West and Beyond sections, taking in Capel-y-ffin and Clyro and Bredwardine, and the toll bridge at Whitney, as well as Hay itself. She mentions the cash point controversy, and saving the Library, and the Timbuktu Trail (the staff of Hay Cinema Bookshop get a mention here, for buying the business from Leon Morelli as a consortium). There's local history, and even a recipe for Welsh cawl.
Eric Gill gets a mention, along with his friend David Jones, another artist, and Eric Ravilious, who also painted in the area. There's Kilvert, of course, and Major Armstrong, Adam Dworski the potter and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visiting Baskerville Hall, as well as Bruce Chatwin and the collector of local folklore Ella Mary Leather. More recent local authors Jasper Fforde and Owen Sheers get a mention too and, of course, Richard Booth, who made Hay into a book town.
There's the Festival, and the gold post box, the town wells and the Castle (still being renovated as the book was being written).
I do have one small niggle, though - she complains about the shop called The Great English Outdoors (in Wales!). If she'd overcome her prejudice and gone inside, she might have found out that English is the surname of the owner, rather than the nationality!
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