Wrapping things up in style! Timothy Spall appears as Churchill amid a newspaper-covered London at beginning of Closing Ceremony

• Opening scene of London in rush hour helped celebrate the UK's Press tradition
• Street scene included roadworkers and lollipop ladies
  
• Replicas of Big Ben, the Eye, St Paul's and Battersea Power Station were part of the newspaper-covered city
  

By Suzannah Hills

PUBLISHED: 15:37 EST, 12 August 2012 | UPDATED: 19:36 EST, 12 August 2012

Britain is known the world over for its literary heritage and journalistic tradition so it was only fitting that the closing ceremony wrapped things up in style - by covering the entire set in old newspapers.

Mini replicas of Big Ben, the Eye, St Paul's and Battersea Power Station were all covered in newspapers and unveiled in an eerie blue light as the crowd was introduced to an early morning London scene at sunrise.

Workers dressed in newspapers emerged from the centre of the stage and started to swamp the city streets as the ceremony proceeded to show viewers through the streets of London at rush hour.

A series of ramps - covering the track where Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis made history - formed a black and white Union Jack also covered in newspaper, the first of many versions of the flag to feature in the extravaganza.

A print-wrapped traffic jam comes to life, as a series of newspaper-clad vehicles, including taxis, trucks and mopeds, honking their horns and revving their engines as they travelled around the lanes of the flag.

The montage of newspaper headlines were chosen to show the connection between Britain's literary past and its tabloid present with classic lines from Geoffrey Chaucer, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens.

Quotes from the earliest surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry to current poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, with extracts from Shakespeare and Milton were flashed up on the big screen along the way.

The classic sayings shown on the big screens included 'All the world's a stage,' or 'Neither a borrower nor a lender be' and 'We are such stuff as dreams are made of.'

Unwrapped on a newspaper rubbish truck, singer Emeli Sande, who performed in the opening ceremony, delighted the crowds with hit song Read All About It as other newspaper glad extras waved Union Jack flags in an explosive contrast of colours.

Forty members from the percussion group Stomp then emerged to swing from the scaffolding, playing models of the capital's landmarks including Big Ben and the London Eye, as if they were instruments.

Winston Churchill, played by King's Speech actor Timothy Spall, stood atop Big Ben reciting the same lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest which helped open the Games 16 days ago: 'Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises.'

As the deafening noise grew to a crescendo, Churchill brought the worldwide audience's focus to the royal box as a fanfare announced the arrival of Prince Harry and International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge.

As Union flags were waved from car windows, the packed stadium was led in the British National Anthem by the London Symphony Orchestra and the Urban Voices Collective.

Newspapers figured strongly in the backdrop of the London Olympics closing ceremony as a fitting conclusion to the opening ceremony which heavily featured historical literature.

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