"There will be counselling and torches available at the end," joked host Peter Guttridge (pictured). But, in a Festival dominated by the subterranean and the unseen, this was a decidedly unthreatening evening of gentle debate.

Here to discuss the most potent human emotion were China Mieville, in whose urban fantasies readers seek out spinetingling thrills, BBC correspondent Gavin Hewitt, who experienced real terror when embedded with American troops in Iraq, and cultural historian Joanna Bourke, whose academic angle might have been nicely balanced by the presence of a psychologist.

Mieville read ghost stories, he said, not to "work through my fears" but to be momentarily "scared s***less", and didn't think horror fiction could have any lasting psychological impact. Bourke disagreed werewolves and vampires had thrived in stories at times of social unrest.

And besides, after reading Mieville's King Rat she had been unable to look at a sewer grate for a whole week.

Hewitt's insight into the behaviour of soldiers under fire was of guaranteed interest. But the most thought-provoking observation came from Graham Greene, who had apparently told a young Hewitt: "If you want to be a foreign correspondent, you'll have to put your soul on ice."