Yet her worldview – expansive, tolerant of complexity, outward-looking – is watermarked throughout this collection. “It is the duty and privilege of the novelist to look both outward and inward, to the past and to the future, to the particular and the universal, to the parish and the world,” she wrote in No Passport Required, a piece from 2002 reflecting on our relationship with Europe with an optimism that seems now to belong to another age. Visiting Booth's former home, now a museum, I started off exploring the newly opened galleries devoted to Hay Castle's centuries-long history. I was instantly drawn to the top-floor room that contains the "Richard Booth Collection". Despite the connection to the last album, we’re told that The Great White Sea Eagle did not actually start life as a follow-up, instead, the songs on this album began while Yorkston was visiting his studio in Cellardyke, Fife and for the first time, starting to write songs on the piano as opposed to his usual guitar as he gazed upon the sea outside his window. As Booth's personal financial situation became ever more precarious, he decided it was time for drastic action, so in 1977, Booth informed a visiting reporter he met in the pub that, "Hay is going to be independent of Britain!". The Fair catalogues were organized by subject area, beginning with the three senior university faculties of theology, law, and medicine; next came “libri historici,” and thereafter “libri philosophici,” in which category all the books relating to the arts course fell, including mathematical and astronomical works such as Sacrobosco’s De sphaera. The Catalogues were compiled from slips sent independently by exhibitors to the publisher of the book fair catalogue. This resulted in the presence of competing editions of the same work, advertised at the same time by their producers (as in S1601 and S1607, above). They frequently ended with an appendix of late declarations or contained a list of forthcoming books.

Booth was a showman and a businessman," said Mari Fforde, a local historian who works for the Hay Castle Trust. "He saw any opportunity for publicity. The declaration of independence was part of that keen sense of publicity, his eccentric and iconoclastic streak and his love of attention." De Lalande, Jérôme. 1803. Bibliographie astronomique; avec l’histoire de l’astronomie depuis 1781 jusqu’á 1802. Paris: De l’Imprimerie de la République. Reprint: Amsterdam: Meridian Publishing, 1970. from which sum is to be deducted 119 l. 19 s. 8 d., being the debt on the foot of this accountant's account as Master of the Horse to the late King George: by virtue of a Treasury warrant dated 5 March 1730–1, so that this accountant remaineth on the determination of this his final account as Master of the Horse to the late Queen Anne in surplusage the sum of 1,311 l. 14 s. 8¾ d.The surplusage appearing to be due to the accomptant consists of many particulars due to the tradesmen and others [by reason of] the ancient method of allowing the whole money [.. by] warrant, though a considerable part thereof may not be paid. no particulars thereof appearing to the auditor nor no acquittances. Physicians (Dr. Thomas Lawrence, first; Dr. Martin Lester, second; Sir David Hamilton, third; Dr. John Arbuthnot, fourth)

Draudius, Georgius. 1625. Bibliotheca classica, sive Catalogus officinalis, in quo singuli singularum facultatum ac professionum libri, qui in quauis fere lingua extant: quique intra hominum propemodum memoriam in publicum prodierunt, secundum artes et disciplinas, earumq[ue] titulos et locos communes, autorumque cognomina singulis classibus et rubricis subnexa, ordine alphabetico recensentur. Frankfurt: Balthasar Oster.Bernardi Morisani Derensis Ibernici In Aristotelis Logica, Physica, Ethica, Francofurti apud Petrum Mareschall in 4. In 2019, climate emergency surpassed all of those other types of emergency to become the most written about emergency by a huge margin, with over three times the usage frequency of health, the second-ranking word,” Oxford said. A version of the Giuntini commentary first appeared together with others in Lyon in 1564, from the Giunti presses (Sacrobosco et al. 1564). Footnote 16 Filippo Tinghi (d. 1580), a relative of the Giunti (Chap. 8), published it in two volumes in 1577–1578 with a ten-year French Royal Privilege dated 24 December 1576 and accompanied this publication with a separate printing of the plaintext corrected by Giuntini which was not announced at the Book Fair. The Fair declaration was one of only two that Tinghi made in his time as publisher, both in 1578, two years before his death. Tinghi was a very shrewd and experienced publisher with strong connections in France, Italy, and Spain. He was the promoter of Giuntini, who, like Tinghi himself, was a member of the powerful Italian community of Lyon. No doubt he declared the theologian-astronomer’s work in Frankfurt to draw international attention to his work. His heir, Symphorien Beraud (fl. 1571–1586), included the commentary in the folio edition of Giuntini’s Speculum astrologiae of 1581, which was reissued in 1583 (Baudrier 1964– 1965, V, 60–61, 65–66). rewards to Richard Marriot, Keeper of the Privy Lodging, and Jasper English, underhousekeeper (opening the gates of the Queen's meadows for the barge horses to pass through that draw up timber, stone &c. for her Majesty's service at Hampton Court)

Climate emergency” beat the words “climate crisis”, “climate action”, “climate denial”, “extinction”, “flight shame”, “global heating” and “plant-based”, which were on the shortlist. Trentman, John A. 1982. Scholasticism in the seventeenth century. In Cambridge history of later medieval philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, Jan Pinborg, and Eleonore Stump, 818–837. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacrobosco, Johannes de, Élie Vinet, Pierio Valeriano and Pedro Nunes. 1606. Sphaera Ioannis de Sacrobosco, emendata. Eliae Vineti Santonis scholia in eandem Sphaeram, ab ipso auctore restituta. Adiunximus huic libro compendium in Sphaeram, per Pierium Valerianum Bellunensem: Et Petri Nonii Salaciensis demonstrationem eorum, quae in extremo capite de climatibus Sacroboscius scribit de inaequali climatum latitudine, eodem Vineto interprete. Post omnes omnium editiones, auctior & locupletior. Lyon: Hugues Gazeau. https://hdl.handle.net/21.11103/sphaera.100354. Sacrobosco, Johannes de and Christoph Clavius. 1607a. Christophori Clavii Bambergensis ex societate Iesu, in Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco, commentarius. Nunc quarto ab ipso Auctore recognitus. Saint Gervais: Samuel Crispin. https://hdl.handle.net/21.11103/sphaera.100377.Schwetschke, Gustav. 1850–1877. Codex nundinarius Germaniae literatae bisecularis. Halle: Selbstverlag. Sacrobosco, Johannes de, Élie Vinet, Pierio Valeriano and Pedro Nunes. 1586. Sphaera Ioannis de Sacro Bosco emendata. Eliae Vineti Santonis scholia in eandem Sphaeram, ab ipso Authore restituta. Adiunximus huic Libro compendium in Sphaeram, per Pierium Valerianum Bellunensem: Et Petri Nonij Salaciensis demonstrationem eorum, quae in extremo capite de climatibus Sacroboscus scribit de inaequali climatum latitudine: eodem Vineto interprete. Ex postrema Impressione Lutetiae. Venice: Heirs of Girolamo Scotto. https://hdl.handle.net/21.11103/sphaera.100325. Some of these dates may have been misrecorded (Faber [Stapulensis] is probably 1495, Iunctinus 1578, Ciotti 1591, Glogoviensis 1513), but allowing for this, there are seven editions mentioned that do not appear in the Fair Catalogues, of which six predate 1564, the year of the catalogue’s first appearance. This suggests how many editions could have been found in Frankfurt by an assiduous enquirer (as was Draudius). Does he at last spell out his reasons for leaving Britain? Not really. There are loads of vague accusations. “You know why [I left]!” he yelps at William, in the royal burial ground at Frogmore, their feet almost “on top of Wallis’s grave”. But nothing concrete emerges, unless you think a misreported row over a bridesmaid’s dress is a reason to “flee” a country. Was it down to Meghan, then? Who knows. All I can tell you is that this manchild who once wanted nothing more than to work in an alpine fondue hut is patently obsessed with his wife. (Long story, but he literally peed his pants in the hours before their first date.) Forty five years after his declaration of independence, Booth's crumbling castle – where he lived and ruled – has been transformed into a museum by the Hay Castle Trust. I found myself in Hay-on-Wye on the museum's opening day in May 2022, as Hay Castle opened to the public for the first time in its 900-year history.