Hay-on-Wye

Hay-on-Wye (Welsh: Y Gelli Gandryll or Y Gelli), often described as "the town of books", is a market town in Brecknockshire, Wales, very close to the border with England, within the Brecon Beacons National Park. Hay is a mecca for bibliophiles, boasting around forty bookshops (mostly selling second-hand books) in and around a town of some 1,300 people.

The bookshops for which the town is now world-famous are a relatively recent innovation. The name most closely associated with the book trade in Hay is that of Richard Booth, who, on April 1, 1977, sought publicity by declaring Hay an "independent republic" with himself as its king. Some consider Hay-on-Wye a micronation, but the web site for Hay admits openly that Booth's declaration was a "publicity stunt", and Hay-on-Wye does not seem to have ever challenged the United Kingdom's sovereignty over it.

The Guardian Hay Festival

Since 1988, Hay has been the venue for a literary festival, sponsored by The Guardian newspaper, which draws a claimed 80,000 visitors over ten days at the beginning of June to see and hear big literary names from all over the world.