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.

LRB 4 August 2005 | PDF Download