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When Bill Clinton addressed the Hay-on-Wye in 2001 he dubbed the world-famous literary festival the "Woodstock of the mind", prompting a rash of book festivals to spring up all over Britain.
But if book festivals are the new rock 'n' roll, the Hay - held annually in a small market town of 1300 people and 39 bookshops - will always be literature's Glastonbury, with previous heavyweight headliners including Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer and Toni Morrison.
This year saw Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Julian Barnes and Jimmy Carter onstage during the 12-day festival late last month. The indomitable Glasto spirit was in evidence on the first weekend, when a sunny Saturday in the Welsh borders turned to unrelenting downpours on the Sunday - leaving festival-goers sodden and marquees flooded.
Fire engines pumped excess water away from the tents. "It happens every year, it is Wales after all," said Vanessa, a cheery 50-something local.
A Hay regular, she refused to let the rain dampen her enthusiasm for the festival. "You have to keep up a good attitude - it's the only way to cope." Unlike most music festivals the Hay has covered walkways to shelter under and a better class of portaloo - with Laura Ashley-esque wallpaper and framed rural scenes gracing the ladies' cubicles. And there is no separate VIP area for the talent.
This means that speakers such as Rushdie, fellow novelist Sebastian Faulks and Carter - whose appearances prompted 8000 people to apply for tickets, at 50 pounds ($126) each - could all be spotted wandering around the site.
Despite the international reputation the festival enjoys, however, the Hay feels small and intimate. The festival has grown enormously since it began in 1988 with just 35 seminars and an audience of 1200. This year there were 470 events and around 85,000 people attended. The crowd was a fairly eclectic bunch - from retired couples to young families to students - all enthusiastic about books and keen to rub shoulders and debate with their favourite authors.
Hay first-timer Isabel - a New Zealander living in Britain since last year - had left her partner and three children back in Oxford to attend the festival. The creative writing Masters graduate had already seen Naomi Klein talk about her book Shock Doctrine, was off to Salman Rushdie that afternoon and had earlier attended Cherie Blair's session about Speaking for Myself, the autobiography that some newspapers are calling the "too much information" memoir.
"She was fantastic, she is a model for English women," insisted Isabel, adding that the Hay audience was "hugely supportive" towards the embattled wife of the former Prime Minister. Isabel braved even worse weather on the Monday to see New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones in a session with Australian author Tim Winton, talking about his latest novel, Breath.
"It was a lovely session, both Jones and Winton dampening that irritating English arrogance that the British Isles are a homecoming for Antipodean Europeans." Winton told the audience: "When I got to Europe [for the first time], I realised I was just pink, not European." Jones also rejected the notion that coming to the British Isles was some sort of cultural return.
"When you live in the Pacific, the New World, you're constantly evaluating your place in it. We can't continue with the same old myths, we have to shake them up a bit," the Mr Pip author said.
Fellow New Zealand author Emily Perkins also appeared at Hay - among 21 "emerging writers" selected to celebrate the festival's 21st anniversary. Perkins, who was promoting her most recent book Novel About My Wife, took part in a session with the Pulitzer Prize-winning short-story author Jhumpa Lahiri, who in April saw her new collection, Unaccustomed Earth, debut in the number one slot of the The New York Times' bestseller list.
Described by the event's chairwoman as "an extraordinary, compelling tale about disillusionment with life in London", Perkins' Novel About My Wife tells the story of Londoner Tom Stone who is trying to make sense of things after the death of his Australian wife, Ann. Perkins got the idea for the book after a dinner party she attended when still living in Britain.
The English host "said that 'white New Zealanders and Australians who live in London are on a chicken run from their own racial issues back home'. I was incensed, I felt that was so parochial but then I wondered why I was so angry. I thought I could use that." The character Ann, an expat, has reinvented herself in London. "I was interested in whether that was possible, and whether you can sustain it," says Perkins.
Writing the bulk of the novel in New Zealand (as the 2006 Buddle Findlay Sargeson fellow) gave Perkins a huge freedom. "It was lovely not feeling glued to what was outside my window - writing in New Zealand, I could own that London."
Last month the US literary establishment hailed Lahiri's latest book as representing a fundamental shift in direction of the American novel, away from white, American-born men. Lahiri, a London-born New Yorker of Bengali Indian descent, shrugged off the mantle.
The title of her collection is taken from a quote by the 19th-century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who also wrote about difference and dislocation. "For me, he represents the best of great American literature. Rather than conquer the white male writer, I felt a handshake across the generations."
After Perkins and Lahiri, British author Julian Barnes interviewed American short-story writer Lorrie Moore, who had conquered her fear of flying to appear at the Hay for the first time in 10 years. The pair valiantly struggled to speak over the drone of the pumps bailing out water from the marquee.
"All short stories are about love," said Moore. Then it was on to the festival lecture, given this year by Salman Rushdie - introduced as one of the world's greatest living writers - on why 16th century Indian art has inspired his writings.
It was interesting to hear about the West and East's mutual interest in warrior knights, princesses and leviathans but all I could think about was Rushdie's recent appearance in Scarlett Johansson's music video, in which the "literary superstar" nuzzles the actor-turned-singer's neck. It's true - book festivals are the new rock 'n' roll.
