We live in an age of war and terror. The four horsemen of the apocalypse gallop through the world as if they had coffee hot-wired into their veins. The tea time of the soul seems lost for the moment. Perhaps the answer is to return to a quieter more peaceful time when the world stopped each day for an hour or so, when people put aside everything else to enjoy a brief respite with their favourite cuppa. Tea Leaves suggests that we contemplate those bygone times and think about mapping future tea leaves in a better world. This is a tea travel book that takes readers to the four corners of the earth in search of that little bit of heaven on earth - the perfectly appointed tearoom with its perfectly brewed cup of tea. You won't visit every tea country here not will you get a taste of every tea experience available across the globe. But you will share my sense of the social meaning of tea. In Tea Leaves, tea is defined as calm, while coffee, that other hot drink, is frantic. Tea is safe, coffee dangerous. Tea is peace, coffee war. Tea is history, coffee modern. Tea is truth, coffee gossip. Tea is literature, coffee journalism. Tea is rural, coffee urban. Tea is healthy, coffee is not. Tea is the waltz, coffee is the mambo, the watusi, the cha, cha, cha. Tea is the Beatles, coffee the Rolling Stones. Tea cures cancer, coffee can cause it. Tea is life, coffee is ulcers. Tea is heaven, coffee can lead to hell. Tea Leaves offers readers something special by whetting your appetite to take some tea leaves of your own. And it strives to offer a momentary escape from the fast-paced, market-mad new world that is increasingly coffee-driven. If it does those things, then its mission will have been accomplished. RV October 2011