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:
Still Reeling from My Loss · Lulu & Co
The Things We Throw Away · The Garbage of England
A Journey in the South · Andrew O’Hagan travels to New Orleans
How to Survive Your Own Stupidity · Homage to Laurel and Hardy
Good Fibs · Truman Capote
Hating Football · Andrew O’Hagan deserts the Tartan Army
Iraq, 2 May 2005 · Two Soldiers
The God Squad · Andrew O’Hagan in Bushland
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