The lost souls of the Atrium hotel

Heathrow, in London’s western outlands, never lets you forget it’s there. Jets ascend and descend constantly, turning the air into a migraine. People and cargo, all going and coming all the time.

Except for the asylum seekers, the refugees, the migrants, who are stuck like lost baggage in commandeered hotels dotted around the airport.

There is the Atrium, opposite a British Airways training centre, a freshly built hotel that self-describes as ‘ultra-chic’ and charges up to £241 a night. It is so close to a runway that from certain angles it looks as if passenger jets are flying right into it. The Home Office has booked out every floor to accommodate the migrants.

The story of how some 40,000 people came to be held in hotels like the Atrium is complicated yet simple. You have a threatened, terrorised world full of people on the move. More of them moving every month.