Flight-on-the-wall writer reveals secret stories of Heathrow

It is more than just a shopping and eating opportunity. Up to 90 million passengers pass through its gates each year and almost 70,000 people are employed there, making Heathrow Airport a place of diverse and contrasting human experiences.

Now, some of the stories of those passengers and of the people who keep one of the world's largest and busiest airports going round the clock, have been told for the first time by author Alain de Botton, who this year became the airport's first writer in residence.

Among stories recounted is the poignant trip of a couple, the wife suffering from a terminal illness, making a final visit to Bali. Then there is the unfaithful married man, jetting off to see his mistress in Los Angeles.

There are the security staff, aware that one mistake could have unthinkable consequences, and the pilots rowing over the use of taxi-ways, their passengers oblivious.

Mr de Botton, author of Essays in Love and The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, was commissioned by Heathrow's owner, BAA, to capture the inner workings of the airport. The author said: "If you could X-ray people's souls at Heathrow, you would find an awful lot of this stuff going on. When you're at an airport, you wonder who people are and where they're going.

"I could ask people and lots of passengers came to tell me their stories that you could not make up."

Mr de Botton was given unprecedented access to all areas for one week during August and full editorial freedom over his work, A Week At The Airport: A Heathrow Diary, parts of which were written at a desk in Terminal 5.

This week he will be reading extracts from the book, completed in just four weeks, over the airport Tannoy.