Letters: A different year, place

Sunanda K Datta-Ray in his column, "Made in China: the genuine fakes" (October 31), writes about the controversy that erupted at Queen Victoria's coronation in 1837 "when a mysterious Chinese in mandarin robe, pigtail and pillbox hat turned up at Westminster Abbey without an invitation". Court officials, the writer says, thought the visitor might be the Son of Heaven's special envoy and seated him "between a bishop and a duke" but were "chagrined to learn the next morning he was only the master of a humble junk anchored in the Thames in London's East End".

While the writer's description of the details of the incident is remarkable, the fact is it did not take place at Queen Victoria's coronation in 1837 but at the opening of the Great Exhibition in London in the summer of 1851.

Ashok Malik New Delhi

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