By Fiona Phillips

The borderlands between Wales and England have always been a mystical place. A land where myths and legends were born, where dragons lived and ley lines cross.

And even in a prosaic 21st century it’s a land where magic still happens… I had no idea what to expect when I arrived at my first Hay Festival of Literature.

A place of stuffy academics dissecting esoteric tomes? Or wall-to-wall luvvies, air-kissing with a collective ‘mwah, mwah’ while indulging in an emperor’s new clothes monologue on an obscure book ‘you simply must read, dahling’?

No. Well, almost invariably, no.

No-one, as I had feared, tested me on whether or not I had read Dostoyevsky or knew my Proust from my Pinter, and far outnumbering the obvious literati were thousands of ordinary people – reading. And many were reading books I’d heard of. And had even read myself.

As ever, my first thought was:”What to wear?” Smart? Casual? Festival? Would it be Hunter wellies and leather-patched corduroy? Boho chic or avant garde? I plumped for Boden and blended in perfectly among a sea of linen suits and panama hats.

This was a great start – and it just kept getting better and better.

One of the most magical things was the fact that the sun came out for Hay. A deckchair, a book, a glass of wine and sunshine… life just doesn’t get any better.

For the uninitiated – and now that I am obviously a Hay veteran I can say this – Hay is like nothing else you’ll have encountered before.

It’s not just about books, but also about ideas – most of which will find their way onto the printed page, but not exclusively.

It’s as mind-expanding as you can get this side of legal and you’ll leave with your head buzzing and your sensibilities challenged.

For me, it was a chance to meet my heroes and to exchange ideas with complete strangers in an atmosphere of tolerance and interest.

The legend that is Harold Evans – a Leviathan among journalists, whizzed through the last 100 years of press photography. Sublime and seminal it was a single hour that I know will help improve the way I work, and yet also left me with the feeling that I knew a lot of this stuff already – I just hadn’t realised it.

Another man who knows his journalistic stuff is broadcaster and comedy writer Andy Hamilton, author of the outstanding Outnumbered, but previously co-creator of possibly the only TV show featuring fictional journalists that the rest of us real-life hacks actually recognise, the simply superb Drop the Dead Donkey.

Never nasty, but endlessly, observantly funny the time just raced by while watching him.

Earlier in the day another legend had captivated an audience, including me. Former West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding most definitely held his own in conversation with Herefordshire’s Matthew Engel on subjects such as pay-per-view TV and the 20/20 game.

The prolific and immensely entertaining Alexander McCall Smith delighted a packed pavilion with tales of his exceptionally well-drawn characters from Precious Ramotswe, in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series to Freddie De La Hay, the canine superspy and star of his latest The Dog Who Came In From the Cold. His wit and gentle humour saw much dissolving of mascara and eye-wiping from his entranced audience.

Fictional teenage diarist Adrian Mole’s creator, Sue Townsend, was in conversation with Anne Robinson later. Not as eye-wateringly funny as her books, it was obvious that tragic events in her own life have coloured her outlook and her writing, although her staunch and acerbic socialist views were never far from the surface.

A real treat for me was an evening session with Val McDermid, Jasper Fforde and Agatha Christie’s grandson Mathew Pritchard who discussed Christie’s enduring appeal.

As a huge fan I was most surprised to see that Poirot and Miss Marple were not treated as guilty pleasures, but pegged as serious influences by established and acclaimed crime writers.

And that was a pivotal moment for me, at Hay.

The festival isn’t about being seen. It isn’t where the smart people go to carry ostentatiously the latest award-winner that they never actually open. It’s simply a celebration of words, of whatever form.

The basic principle appears to be that readers are better people, regardless of their choice of book.

Unsurprisingly deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg attracted a big crowd, and also, unsurprisingly, he talked a great deal without giving very much away at all – but he did it an that effortless and easy way that underlined the reasons for his success in the recent leaders’ debates and won him more fans along the way.

I would be hard pressed to select my absolute highlight from this year’s Hay Festival – sadly work and the rest of my life got in the way of me devoting the entire 11 days to its offerings, but David Arronovitch’s treatise on the popularity of conspiracy theories has to be near the top.

A sceptic entirely after my own heart I spent the entire hour doing a passable impression of the Churchill dog, nodding in agreement almost convulsively.

The realisation that we wordlessly shared almost identical opinions made my heart beat a little faster.

Despite the fact that the Hay audiences are drawn from across the world, the quintessential Englishness of an event like this is everywhere – and nowhere more obviously then in the queues to get into the shows. No barriers or railings were needed to see an elaborate quadrille of ordered lines shuffling back and forth in a way that would have thrilled a Regimental Sergeant Major and courtesy and good manners were evident everywhere.

I left Hay with a heavy heart, a much lighter wallet – but since I could find ways to spend in a desert, that was only to be expected - and a head filled with other people’s ideas that challenged, awoke or engendered a million of my own.