A City of Prose 
Andrew O’Hagan
It has become the odour of the age, flowers rotting in their cellophane wrappers. People began laying them on the steps of St Pancras Church the morning after the 7 July bombings, and within a day or two the steps had been transformed into a slope of glinting paper, the flowers strangely urban behind the police cordon. It was also a slope of words: handwritten messages, emails, shop-bought cards and pavement script. The church’s columns were chalked with words too, and the Word of God – a King James Bible, ‘User’s Guide on Back’ – appeared to float unabashed on a sea of London scrawls.
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Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, many of which were first published in the London Review, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, won the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize award for fiction.
Other articles by this contributor:
Cartwheels over Broken Glass · worshipping Morrissey
Blame it on the boogie · In Pursuit of Michael Jackson
Seventy Years in a Filthy Trade · Andrew O’Hagan meets E.S. Turner
The Nominee · With the Democrats
The God Squad · Andrew O’Hagan in Bushland
How to Survive Your Own Stupidity · Homage to Laurel and Hardy
Good Fibs · Truman Capote
At the Movies · M. Night Shyamalan
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