Rowan Pelling (Editrice of The Erotic Review) in The Independent on Sunday, 8 June 2003:

“ Mornings are not really my thing.... I therefore needed [Erotic Review staffers] Annie and Suzy as map-readers and minders, to hustle me into bed and to confiscate all alcohol on site. In return I had promised them unlimited literary hedonism and custody of all my drink. Fortunately for my honour, we were due to stay at an imposing country mansion just outside Hay, which has gained a reputation in recent years for being a 24-hour party palace. The host, Palash Dave, a debonair and gregarious salonier, rents it for the week and invites a motley crew of writers, old Etonians, communists and leggy blondes to carouse in its panelled halls. One recent party there culminated in the all-too public coupling of an Irish poet and some nymph to his rhapsodies of "nectar ... fragrance ... ambrosia". It takes a poet to say things that vile.

Our three-girl road trip had a peculiarly regressive effect. Before long we were chewing gum, listening to Eighties hits, and talking about the best snog we'd ever had. We were like naughty sixth-formers who have nicked their mum's car to go and see Robbie Williams in concert. The feeling intensified when we arrived at Whitney Court to find that we had been assigned a four-bed girls' dorm. Annie and Suzy made superb prefects and steered me safely past temptation to my Saturday afternoon pre-lecture rendezvous with Andrew Davies. ”

Rowan Pelling in The Independent on Sunday, 9 June 2002:

“ The crescendo of our long weekend came, very properly, on our last night. We found ourselves among 20 or so diehards at a fading party, all of us desperate for some dancing. A generous-spirited reveller invited everyone back to the house he had hired five miles out of Hay and a convoy of cars threaded along dark lanes, up a steep rise, then swung abruptly through monumental gateposts. The brooding mansion in front of us could hardly be described as a "house". In the oak-panelled hall a sound system was already pumping music to skinny-hipped groovers while our host filled glasses with champagne.

I wandered the corridors like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, encountering ever more striking tableaux. In a brutally lit kitchen another group of doe-eyed sprites were talking excitable gibberish. Alone in the corner, as incongruous as Alice's white rabbit with fob-watch, was the writer, wit and Iain Duncan Smith lookalike Francis Wheen, picking bits of chicken from a carcass. In the salon, my friend the publisher Margaret Little was being pressed by a young novelist to take his hand in marriage; he disappeared in a fit of pique when she said no.

Back in the hall a pretty youth called James invited me and a friend to go bouncing on beds. A posse of people dashed after us, convinced we were laden with drugs, and were perplexed to find us trampolining in the master bedroom.

I returned to the hall where Francis had settled at the piano. Maria, the novelist Chris Hart and I took up positions around him and sang our way through a repertoire of songs from the shows, Seekers hits and traditional hymns. Chris's rendition of Old Man River was spookily indistinguishable from Paul Robeson's. As we finished a rousing rendition of Abide with Me the fingertips of dawn could be glimpsed through the window. It was time to go home. We later found out that Francis never got to bed; when he retired to his room he found his possessions outside the door and moans of passion from within. I also learnt that pretty-boy James was Kylie's errant on/off boyfriend. In London, paparazzi dog his every move; in Hay, people only have eyes for Louis de Bernieres.