So in parallel to the philosophical discussion about Britain's place in the world is a grittier process of asking what can be given up with least pain.
Its author emerges as a grittier W.G. Sebald, a lyrical German writer with the same forlorn urge to rescue lives and cultures from oblivion.
I don't know enough about Tzu Chi to endorse them, but their bottles-to-blankets activity seems a grittier form of the recycling done by charity shops in the UK.
