  HD 142527 is a young pre-main sequence star with properties indicative of the
presence of a giant planet or/and a low-mass stellar companion. We have
analyzed an X-Shooter/Very Large Telescope spectrum to provide accurate stellar
parameters and accretion rate. The analysis of the spectrum, together with
constraints provided by the SED fitting, the distance to the star (140 +- 20
pc) and the use of evolutionary tracks and isochrones, lead to the following
set of parameters T_eff = 6550 +- 100 K, log g = 3.75 +- 0.10, L_*/L_sun = 16.3
+- 4.5, M_*/M_sun = 2.0 +- 0.3 and an age of 5.0 +- 1.5 Myr. This stellar age
provides further constrains to the mass of the possible companion estimated by
Biller et al. (2012), being in-between 0.20 and 0.35 M_sun. Stellar accretion
rates obtained from UV Balmer excess modelling, optical photospheric line
veiling, and from the correlations with several emission lines spanning from
the UV to the near-IR, are consistent to each other. The mean value from all
previous tracers is 2 (+- 1) x 10^-7 M_sun yr^-1, which is within the upper
limit gas flow rate from the outer to the inner disk recently provided by
Cassasus et al. (2013). This suggests that almost all gas transferred between
both components of the disk is not trapped by the possible planet(s) in-between
but fall onto the central star, although it is discussed how the gap flow rate
could be larger than previously suggested. In addition, we provide evidence
showing that the stellar accretion rate of HD 142527 has increased by a factor
~ 7 on a timescale of 2-5 years.
