Product Description

In the summer of 2009, Alain de Botton will be invited by the owners of Heathrow airport to become their first ever Writer in Residence. He will be installed in the middle of Terminal 5 on a raised platform with a laptop connected to screens, enabling passengers to see what he is writing and to come and share their stories. He will meet travellers from around the world, and will be given unprecedented access to wander the airport and speak with everyone from window cleaners and baggage handlers to air traffic controllers and cabin crew. Working with the renowned documentary photographer Richard Baker, de Botton will produce an extraordinary meditation upon the nature of place, time, and our daily lives. He will explore the magical and the mundane, personal and collective experiences and the interactions of travellers and workers all over this familiar but mysterious site. Like all airports, Heathrow (the 15th century village of Heath Row lies beneath the short stay car park) is a ‘non-place’ that we by definition want to leave, but it also provides a window into many worlds – through the thousands of people it dispatches every day. A Week at the Airport is sure to delight de Botton’s large following, and anyone interested in the stories behind the way we live.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1323 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Review
`funny, charming and slender enough to pack in your carry-on...' --Daily Mail

`Simultaneously poignant and terribly funny...de Botton's most imaginative work yet' --Spectator

`Funny, surprising ... [de Botton's] observations on airport life are wry and thought-provoking ... excellent' --Telegraph

`Shrewd, perceptive and gently ironic ... At de Botton's T5, banality and sublimity circle in a perpetual holding pattern.' --Boyd Tonkin, Independent

From the Inside Flap
In the summer of 2009, Alain de Botton was invited by the owners of Heathrow to become their first ever writer-in-residence. Given unprecedented, unresticted access to wander around one of the world's busiest airports, he met travellers from all over the globe, and spoke with everyone from baggage handlers to pilots, and senior executives to the airport chaplain. BAsed on these conversations he has produced this extraordinary meditation on the nature of travel, work, relationships and our daily lives. Working with the renowned documentary photographer Richard Baker, he explored the magical and the mundane, and the interactions of travellers and workers all over this familiar but mysterious 'non-place', qhich by definition we are eager to leave. Taking the reader through departures, 'air-side' and the arrivals hall, de Botton shows with his usual combination of wit and wisdom that spending time in an airport can be more revealing than we might think. £8.99

From the Back Cover
If you were asked to take a Martian to visit a single place that captures all the themes running through the modern world - from our faith in technology to our destruction of nature, from our interconnectedness to our romanticising of travel - then you would almost certainly have to head to an airport. Airports, in all their turmoil, interest and beauty, are the imaginative centres of our civilisation. 'I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' Jan Morris 'De Botton's gift is to prompt us to think about how we live and how we might change things' The Times

Customer Reviews

A week at the airport
Alain de Botton has been on my list of `authors I should read but haven't quite found the moment'. I hate flying, and airports, but as I have a forthcoming trip via Terminal Five this was obviously the right opportunity. I really enjoyed it, especially the way some passengers seem to have used the author's desk (he set up camp in the terminal during a week as `writer in residence') as a kind of confessional, and the personal stories of the anonymous members of staff you see at the checkin or in security. (There's a cleaner who's also an opera singer) Even the head of BA Willy Walsh who you would expect to come across as rather corporate turns out to be a rather appealing nerdy type. Definitely worth a read. The pics are good too.

Airport Writing
Like a lot of de Botton readers, my introduction to his literature was through The Art of Travel so I suppose the yearning for A Week at the Airport to be like an 'AoT 2' may have been a jerk reaction. He usually spends a few years writing his books and from what I've read, Heathrow Diary was put together in a matter of weeks to satisfy his airport owner paymaster so I'm not entirely surprised, nor disappointed, that he might have slipped in a few references that have previously occupied a page of AoT.

I almost forgive him. He seems to relish the whole world of travel and aviation - as do I - what with plenty of mentions in AoT, Pleasures of Work (the last chapter on the death of flying machines) and now Heathrow Airport. He's clearly writing with the nerdy passion of a frustrated plane-spotting writer who's been given a corporate project to dash off before half-term. And here's the crux: It is a BAA-supported book that happens to be available to the rest of us punters, so I think we're quite fortunate to have this book on the open market rather than something that's handed out to shareholders and their WAGS. Despite its corporate-sponsored entity, I notice that the words `climate' and `noise' creep into the text which must have caused a few suits to sniff.

There's lots of classic dB to enjoy and I love the lines: "As every plane took up its position at its assigned gate, a choreographed dance began. A passenger walkway rolled forward and closed its rubber mouth in a hesitant kiss over the front left-hand door." And the encounter with the BA Chairman was hilariously irreverent. The man is having to lay of hundreds of his staff to save the company and he then gets the piss taken out of him by the clowning philosopher.

Lots of people have a go at him for stating the bleedin' obvious (though I like that) but since this is my first review, I'm loathed to say too many harsh truths against him in case he replies to me with the venom spat at that critical blogger recently! This book will join its cousins on my shelf marked `V Enjoyable' though perhaps not on the `Best of ..' but it is every bit worth the measly Fiver if you like reading great observation partnered with witty photography.

Pleasing little essay
It's clear that this book shouldn't be confused with one of Alain de Botton's major books. He's already written one of those this year (The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work). This is a little essay aiming to capture the atmosphere of the airport. It was written in just a few weeks - and therefore has to be judged more like an essay than a major volume (the online price better reflects what one should be paying for it). But taken on these terms, the book is full of insights, humour, great photography and sheer good fun. It should appeal to anyone who has ever felt peculiarly intensely about airports, whether hateful or admiring thoughts.