20 August 2009

The life of Heathrow ââ¬' chapter and verse

LONDON - Heathrow Airport has hired a writer, Alain de Botton, to spend a week inside Terminal 5 researching a book on the life of the airport, Europeââ¬â¢s busiest.

De Botton said he had full access to the terminal and would be allowed to write what he likes.

"My agent and I devised the cockroach test: in other words, I had to be allowed to discuss every last cockroach I might spot at the airport if that's what I felt like doing," he wrote in Londonââ¬â¢s Evening Standard newspaper.

He added, "If you wanted to take a Martian to a single place that best captures everything that is distinctive and particular to modern civilisation, in its highs and lows, you would undoubtedly take them to the airport," said de Botton, whose latest book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

De Botton's airport observations will be collected in a book, with 10,000 copies given away free to travellers at Heathrow.

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