Tea and sympathy

 

    To mark the paperback publication later this week of David Mitchell's marvellous novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, a Japanese teahouse is being erected in London's Spitalfields. Designed as an "immersive reading room" and open from tomorrow until Friday, with a special appearance by David Mitchell on Wednesday at 1.00pm, all the details are here.

    When the tea-house was planned, no-one could have foreseen what the Japanese people would be enduring now, but it seems very fitting that something which represents Japanese history, life and culture - and the novel does that in fine form, too - should be there, perhaps acting as a focal point or a place to gather in sympathy, given what that nation is facing.