Crowds clutching flowers surged from subway exits and moved out across the parks to lay tributes before palace gates.

Drivers were holding up name cards, families were clutching flowers and teddy bears, and they were all looking hopefully at each face that came through the sliding doors.

Edith sat beside him, clutching flowers.

These visitors, clutching flowers or bottles, looked as if they were intent on having a good time.

During most of postwar art history, portraiture of prominent subjects, and especially commissioned portraits, were associated with fawning, sentimentalized images of children clutching flowers, crusty dowagers and overfed captains of industry.

Today, as throughout the long hard hours since the bodies of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found in dense undergrowth on Saturday, the people of this small town and visitors from far afield arrived at St. Andrew's churchyard clutching flowers to place among the lichen-covered tombstones.

It was a testament to his effect on her that it took her a full ten seconds to so much as notice the enormous man beside him clutching flowers in his huge hand.

Their proud parents clutched camcorders and flowers.

On weekdays, Cindy - as everyone called her - would return from Manhattan on the 66 bus clutching flowers or freshly-baked bread.

Some of the old women clutched flowers in their weathered hands.