Our Book Town Story

What are Book Towns?

Alex Johnson signing his book ‘Book Towns’ at the Sedbergh Festival

Book Towns were the brain‑child of book dealer and self-styled “King” of Hay‑on‑Wye, Richard Booth. In 1961 Hay became the first ever book town, and there are now well over twenty of them around the world.

Compared to Hay‑on‑Wye (which is in Wales by the way), most of the Book Towns that are to be found in Europe, South‑east Asia, North America and Australia are tiddlers. They tend to be small towns or villages located mostly in rural areas, and Sedbergh is no exception.

Sedbergh Book Town

There are only a couple of shops in Sedbergh which sell only books (however, one of them is enormous! See below). But there are book outlets in many shops such as Farfield Clothing and Sleepy Elephant, while Howgills Bookshop at Sedbergh Information Centre has a huge & eclectic range of books from 18 dealers, and you can find books at Farfield Mill Arts and Heritage Centre, a mile away up the road to Hawes. There are also a number of Book Cafes where you can buy books as well as great meals, teas and cakes.

Sedbergh Book Shelter

Finally there is the Book Shelter, a redundant bus shelter where you can take a book for free, as long as you replace it with another one.

Westwood Books, at the eastern end of Main Street is a family‑run enterprise. Originally the business moved to Sedbergh from Hay‑on‑Wye in 2005 but is now run by Paul & Heather Thomas. The former cinema is home to about 70,000 titles at any one time and it’s the sort of place where browsers can lose all sense of time.

And when your bibliophilic passion is spent – or you just need a little breather – remember that Sedbergh is also a rather nice little town, with cakes and ale and stunning views. Round off your day with one of the gentle ambles described on our Things to do around Sedbergh page.

Sedbergh Book Town Patrons

Eric Robson – writer and broadcaster

“First, a confession: I spend far too much on books. Which is why this idea of creating a Book Town in Sedbergh is a thoroughly bad idea. Until now my nearest Book Towns were Hay‑on‑Wye and Wigtown, which meant my obsessions were held in check by sheer distance. Now it’s going to be far too easy. I can already hear my bank manager turning in his vault. I won’t be able to resist. And there are thousands of other bibliophiles holding their heads in their hands as we speak. ‘Not Sedbergh!’ I hear them cry just before they get into their car and are drawn slowly but surely towards the Howgills.”

Sarah Hall – author

Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974.

She took a degree in English and Art History at Aberystwyth University, and began to take writing seriously from the age of twenty, first as a poet, several of her poems appearing in poetry magazines, then as a fiction-writer. She took an M Litt in Creative Writing at St Andrew’s University and stayed on for a year afterwards to teach on the undergraduate Creative Writing programme.

Her first novel, Haweswater, was published in 2002. It is set in the 1930s, focuses on one family – the Lightburns – and is a rural tragedy about the disintegration of a community of Cumbrian hill-framers, due to the building of a reservoir. It won several awards, including the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book).

Her second book, The Electric Michelangelo (2004), set in the turn-of-the-century seaside resorts of Morecambe Bay and Coney Island, was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book).

The Carhullan Army (2007), won the 2007 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 2008 Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction.

Her most recent books are the novel How to Paint a Dead Man (2009); her first collection of short stories The Beautiful Indifference (2011); Mrs Fox (2014), which won the BBC National Shorts Story Award; and the novel The Wolf Border (2015).

Sarah Hall is an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University and a fellow of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.

M.W. Craven (Michael Craven) – author

Multi-award-winning author M. W. Craven was born in Carlisle but grew up in Newcastle. He joined the army at sixteen, leaving ten years later to complete a social work degree. Seventeen years after taking up a probation officer role in Cumbria, at the rank of assistant chief officer, he became a full-time author.

The Puppet Show, the first book in his Cumbria-set Washington Poe series, was published by Little, Brown in 2018 and went on to win the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger in 2019. It has now been translated into twenty-five languages. Black Summer, the second in the series, was longlisted for the 2020 Gold Dagger as was book three, The Curator in 2021. The fourth in the series, Dead Ground, was published in 2021, became an instant Sunday Times bestseller and was longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculiar Novel of the Year 2022, and won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2022.

His most recent book, The Botanist, was published in hardback in June 2022 and was also an instant Sunday Times bestseller. The paperback will be released on 24 November 2022. Fearless, the first in Mike’s new US set series, starring ex-US Marshal Ben Koenig, will be released 29 June 2023 in the UK and 11 July 2023 in the US