So who lives in Larkshire?

Jilly Cooper's new novel has the customary succession of tousled sheets and champagne-fuelled seductions. But Pandora, partly set in the Bond Street and Hoxton art worlds, is also a stinging satire with scores of vaguely familiar characters. This time, the author of Polo and Riders has swung her croquet mallet not only at the county set but also at the Saatchi/Serota crowd and their attendant vanities.

Just this week, Cooper revealed that Camilla Parker Bowles's ex-husband Andrew, along with his friends Mickey Suffolk (the Earl of Suffolk), Rupert Lycett Green and David Somerset (the Duke of Beaufort) had provided the inspiration for sexy bastard Rupert Campbell-Black, the showjumping champion and upper-class bounder of Riders who makes a cameo appearance in Pandora. "They were a wildly dashing and exciting group," she remembers fondly, "but Campbell-Black's shittiness was entirely my invention and had nothing whatsoever to do with their behaviour."

So, without wanting to encourage rich litigators to reach for their libel lawyers, just who are the Cooper friends and acquaintances who have inspired the characters of her feisty new book?

Larkshire

Cooper's fictitious county of

Larkshire is pretty obviously Gloucestershire - home to royalty, polo and high-collared Sloanes. Cooper and her husband Leo live in Bisley, a hard-drinking Cotswold village near Damien Hirst's new haunt at Stroud. Locals include veteran sculptor Lynn Chadwick, handsome TV doctor Hilary Jones, Liz Hurley's friend Henry Dent-Brocklehurst at Sudeley Castle, and, just over the border in Wiltshire, Camilla Parker Bowles.

A map of Cooper's village of Limesbridge strongly resembles real-life Bisley - right down to the animal graveyard the dog-mad author has at the bottom of her garden. In one scene. the Belvedons throw a riotous lunch party. Those who attended the Coopers' recent ruby wedding celebrations, when the entire marquee nearly slid down the hill with drink, may dimly recall some similarities.

Cooper admits that Foxes Court, the historic house owned by her art dealer character Sir Raymond Belvedon, is based on the house of the Marquess and Marchioness of Reading, but quickly stresses that the charming Simon and Mindy Reading bear "absolutely no resemblance" to the tangled Belvedons. If any of the well-bred residents are well-dressed, it's because milliner David Shilling advised Cooper on the numerous hats that appear in the book.

The London art crowd

Cork Street's screaming egos are enthusiastically depicted, with naïve, elderly gallery owners losing their hearts and trousers to sexually indeterminate thrusters. Cooper's research was assisted by art philanthropists Lord and Lady Gavron, who know how it feels to be sweet-talked by art pros with pound signs in their eyes, while Jay Jopling, agent to many of the leading Young Brit Art crowd, guided Cooper round the "YBA" scene of Tate Modern and its ephemeral talents. The Turner Prize pops up as the £20,000 Whistler Prize and is won by conceptual artist Trafford, described only as "unspeakably scrofulous". Ring any bells?

Trafford's winning entry is called Shagpile, and is an eight-foot tower of males nudes "plugged into each other like Lego which those 'in the know' thought both 'pivotal' and 'challenging'." Neurotic artist Sienna Belvedon, beautiful but troubled, has a lot in common with Tracey Emin. Both make shocking art installations. Both have posed in the nude. Both could be a lot prettier if they tried.

Cooper's caustic views were encouraged by the mercurial David Lee, editor of Jackdaw magazine. Cigar-smoking artist Maggi Hambling also helped Cooper. One can only speculate how much the character of painter Joan Bideford, "a splendid bruiser with a fondness for her own sex", was based on her. The Evening Standard's masterly Brian Sewell was also consulted.

Bond Street

The climax of the book occurs at Sotheby's, with auctioneer and chairman Henry Wyndham centre stage. He is described as "a shaggier, much taller Hugh Grant, a giraffe crossed with Michelangelo's David". On the night before a multimillion pound sale he practises his increments in an English fern-scented bath, murmuring to himself the words "eleven million, fifteen million (God willing), twenty million (God even more willing)."