[perma-smoking, impossibly elegant middle-aged European women, somewhere between Camille Paglia and Anne Bancroft in The Graduate]

Here, it is still socially acceptable to smoke cigars, and pretty much de rigueur to get ragingly drunk. Told that all this was a central part of the Frankfurt experience, I sheepishly give it a go: after six glasses of wine, I have half-convinced a French publisher that the time is right for a Gallic-flavoured biography of Pink Floyd, and managed to get myself pencilled in for dinner in London with PJ O'Rourke.

Guardian > John Harris: You read it here first, hübsche Geschichte, die Guardian-Lesern die Frankfurter Buchmesse zu erklären versucht.