In England, Booth worked as a
truck driver,
legal clerk,
wine steward, and English teacher (in
Rushden). He also taught English at
Castle School, Taunton. In 1974 Booth was Poetry Editor of Fuller d'Arch Smith, founded by Timothy d'Arch Smith and
Jean Overton Fuller. He had recently bought a house in
Knotting in North
Bedfordshire, and was instrumental in finding Fuller a house in
Wymington which also became the registered office of the company. The book was named for the village in which Booth was living at the time. The book features a series of lyrics in which he seeks links between the present and the Saxon past, and the man called Knot who gave his name to the village. Booth also accumulated a library of contemporary verse, which allowed him to produce anthologies and lectures. In the late 1970s Booth turned mainly to writing fiction. His first successful novel,
Hiroshima Joe, was published in 1985. The book is based on what he heard from a man he met as a boy in Hong Kong and contains passages set in that city during the
Second World War. Booth was a veteran traveller who retained an enthusiasm for flying, also expressed in his poems, such as "Kent Says" and In
Killing the Moscs. His interest in observing and studying wildlife resulted in a book about
Jim Corbett, a big-game hunter and expert on man-eating tigers. Many of Booth's works were linked to the British imperial past in China, Hong Kong and Central Asia. Booth was also fond of the United States, where he had many poet friends, and of Italy, which features in many of his later poems and in his novel
A Very Private Gentleman (1990). Booth's novel
Industry of Souls was shortlisted for the 1998
Booker Prize. Booth died of cancer in
Devon in 2004, shortly after completing
Gweilo, a memoir of his Hong Kong childhood written for his own children. Three Booth's novels have been translated into French :
Gweilo,
Music on the Bamboo Radio and
The American. ==Works==