James Hanning

My wife put it in her usual succinct way: ‘Why do you want to write a book about such a sleazeball?’ I couldn’t really say. The late Richard Booth, second-hand bookseller and former self-crowned king of Hay-on-Wye, was not instantly lovable. Some found him the essence of unlovability. He was scruffy, disorganised, egocentric, impetuous, hopeless with money and capricious. At times he was rude, promiscuous, bad-tempered, small-minded, boring, bombastic, unscrupulous and unaware of the upset he could cause. Yet most of his staff – those who survived the whim of iron – loved him for his good heart, his childlike enthusiasm, his humour, ingenuousness, irreverence, shyness and kindness.

One of the great pluses of electric cars is that they are so quiet. The driver’s seat is a peaceful place to be, although safety regulations dictate they must emit artificial noise to alert pedestrians to their presence when travelling below certain speeds. Now that steps have been taken to prevent the visually impaired from falling victim to their silent menace – a subject that for some reason provokes laughter, but they have killed people, so they now make a friendly bleep – another sense can be spared the intrusions of the combustion engine. Isn’t silence, or your own choice of music or whatever, the preferable accompaniment to driving? But no. Car manufacturers, concerned we’ll feel deprived, are investing in replacement forms of noise.