Everyone's favourite pop-philosophy author, Alain de Botton, has been spending a week at Heathrow airport as 'writer in residence'.He divided his time between sitting at a desk in Terminal Five, complete with laptop and reference books, observing the eddy of human traffic, and roaming around in an exclusive 'access all areas' kind of way, engaging with parts of BAA's empire on their own territory.
As he has a one book publishing deal with Profile for the fruits of his labours, many critics have accused him of selling out, pandering to BAA's desire to purchase high culture credibility as if a commodity.
I think it's marvellous: airports are by their very nature dramatic places, stuffed to the rafters with high emotional tension. Factor in the fact that T5 is (intentionally) the biggest, busiest, flashiest terminal in the West serviced by numerous industries catering to our every (real and imagined) need while in transit, surely all human life is there?
Material enough for more than just one BAA vanity book, I would have thought.
See the BBC Radio 4 Today programme audio slideshow here.
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